Maurice Druon Quotes & Sayings

There is a singular strand running through history, always renewing itself, that of fanatics for the general good and for the written law. Logical to the point of inhumanity, pitiless towards others as towards themselves, these servants of abstract gods and of absolute law accept the role of executioners, because they wish to be the last executioner. They deceive themselves because, once dead, the world no longer obeys them. — Maurice Druon

Accursed! Accursed! You shall be accursed to the thirteenth generation! — Maurice Druon

First love is the only pure and happy one. If it goes wrong, nothing can replace it. Later loves can never attain to the same limpid perfection; though they may be as solid, as marble, they are streaked with veins of another colour, the dried blood of the past. — Maurice Druon

Italian is the language of song. German is good for philosophy and English for poetry. French is best at precision; it has a rigour to it. — Maurice Druon

The French no longer respect their language, because they no longer love themselves, and, no longer loving themselves, they no longer love what was the instrument of their glory - their language. — Maurice Druon

I lived the life of Londoners - and thence comes my immense gratitude and my deep attachment with the British people. I do not think there has ever been a people in the world who displayed a heroism as discreet, as mundane and as universal. — Maurice Druon

I'm doing the best I can. Getting old, that's what it is. I'll be fifty-three at the feast of Saint Michael. I'm no longer as strong as you are, young sirs,' said the ferryman. — Maurice Druon

The people are always prepared to shout on the side of power and to make a noise when it costs them nothing — Maurice Druon

Number is the Word but is not utterance it is wave and light, though no one sees it it is rhythm and music, though no one hears it. Its variations are limitless and yet it is immutable. Each form of life is a particular reverberation of Number. — Maurice Druon

Prince Edward confirmed the sentence; but he was reflecting deeply and beginning silently to form views as to how a man destined to great responsibilities should behave. To listen before speaking, to inform yourself before judging, to understand before deciding, and to remember always that there were to be found in every man the springs both of the highest as well as the lowest actions: these, for a sovereign, were the first steps towards wisdom. — Maurice Druon

Days lived, whether full or empty, whether busy or serene, are but days gone by, and the ashes of the past weigh the same in every hand. — Maurice Druon

Funny weather today,' said the ferryman, bending slowly to his oars. 'In the morning you wake up to such a mist that you can't see two fathoms distance. And then about ten o'clock out comes the sun. One says to oneself "Here's spring on the way". And no sooner said than hailstorms set in for the afternoon. And now the wind's getting up, and there's going to be quite a blow, that's certain. Funny weather. — Maurice Druon

Socialist ideology is making France go to pot, and the French language with it. — Maurice Druon

It must be admitted that such things were common coin of the period. Kingdoms were often handed over to adolescents, whose absolute power fasinated them as might a game. Hardly grown out of the age in which it is fun to tear the wings from flies, they might now amuse themselves by tearing the heads from men. Too young to fear or even imagine death, they would not hesitate to distribute it around them. — Maurice Druon

When one has governed men for a long time, when one has thought that one has acted for the best, when one knows the pains the task has entailed, and then suddenly sees that one has never been either loved or understood, but merely submitted to, then one is overwhelmed with bitterness, and wonders whether one could not have found some better way of spending one's life. — Maurice Druon

The Queen watched the drops of sweat pearling her husband's brow. And nothing disgusts a woman more than the sweat of the man she has ceased to love. — Maurice Druon

I love English. I learned it from the speeches of Winston Churchill. — Maurice Druon

Those called upon to play a decisive part in the history of nations are more often than not unaware of the destinies they embody — Maurice Druon

The hand of God strikes swiftly, particularly when assisted by the hand of man. — Maurice Druon

It is thus that imagination can in the end determine destiny, and it but needs our future actions to be given shape in speech so that we are obliged to give them the reality of accomplishment. — Maurice Druon

Every man believes to some extent that the world began when he was born and, at the moment of leaving it, suffers at having to let the Universe remain unfinished. — Maurice Druon

Anarchy is as detestable in grammar as it is in society. — Maurice Druon

Several Mohammedan countries in North Africa and the Middle East are precisely in a period of fourteenth-century development and can show us, in a number of respects, a reflection of what the European medieval world was like. Similar towns, their houses piled one upon another, narrow swarming streets, enclosing a few sumptuous palaces; the same extremes of appalling misery among the poor and of opulence among great lords; the same story-tellers at the corners of the streets, propagating both myths and news; the same population, nine-tenths illiterate, submitting through long years to oppression and then suddenly rebelling violently in murderous panic; the same influence of religious conscience upon public affairs; the same fanaticism; the same intrigues among the powerful; the same hate among rival factions; the same plots so curiously ravelled that their solution lies only in the spilling of blood! — Maurice Druon

I love English, though I now call it 'Anglo- American' because we no longer speak British English due to globalization and America's economic power. — Maurice Druon

Mediocrities can tolerate being surrounded only by flatterers who conceal their mediocrity. — Maurice Druon

A man who would agree to betray his own conscience for the sake of a mitre, might well also steal and betray. — Maurice Druon

How, then, did it happen that this same France forty years later came to be crushed on the battlefield by a nation it outnumbered fivefold? Why should its noblemen be split up into factions, its bourgeoisie in revolt, its people overwhelmed by excessive taxation, its provinces lawless and plagued by roving gangs engaged in pillaging and crime, all authority flouted, the currency weakened, trade at a standstill, and poverty and violence rife everywhere? Why this collapse? What caused this reversal of fortune? It was mediocrity. The mediocrity of just a few kings, their vanity and self-importance, their frivolousness in the conduct of their affairs, their inability to attract talented advisors, their nonchalance, their presumptuousness, their failure to draw up grand designs or even to follow those already conceived. — Maurice Druon

Beside London Bridge, the Ponte Vecchio at Florence seemed but a mere trifle in Guccio's memory, and the Arno a brook compared with the Thames. He said so to his companion. 'All the same we teach them everything,' the latter replied. — Maurice Druon

I have always regarded historical fiction and fantasy as sisters under the skin, two genres separated at birth. — Maurice Druon

Every unjust act, even committed for the sake of a just cause, carries its curse with it. — Maurice Druon

Each one of us has his shining hour in the events of his century. On one occasion it may be Monseigneur of Kent, on another Monseigneur of Lancaster, some other on a previous occasion and yet another on a later, whom the event illumines because of the decisive part he plays in it. Thus is made the history of the world. — Maurice Druon