Jean Giraudoux

"The secret of success is sincerity. Once you can fake that you've got it made."

"Everyone always dies for his country. If you have lived in it, well and wisely and actively, you die for it too."

"As soon as war is declared it will be impossible to hold the poets back. Rhyme is still the most effective drum."

"Born enemies don't fight. Nations you would say were designed to go to war against each other — by their skins, their language, their smell: always jealous of each other, always hating each other — they're not the ones who fight. You will find the real antagonists in nations fate has groomed and made ready for the same war."

"There is no better way of exercising the imagination than the study of law. No poet ever interpreted nature as freely as a lawyer interprets the truth."

"Only the mediocre are always at their best."

"To win a woman in the first place one must please her, then undress her, and then somehow get her clothes back on her. Finally, so she will allow you to leave her, you've got to annoy her."

"The flower is the poetry of reproduction. It is an example of the eternal seductiveness of life."

"When you see a woman who can go nowhere without a staff of admirers, it is not so much because they think she is beautiful, it is because she has told them they are handsome."

"A golf course is the epitome of all that is purely transitory in the universe; a space not to dwell in, but to get over as quickly as possible."

"Vous êtes avocat! Vous avez le devoir au contraire de recourir à toutes les ruses pour défendre vos clients. Au mensonge. A la calomnie."

"In wartime a man is called a hero. It doesn't make him any braver, and he runs for his life. But at least it's a hero who is running away."

"Wer noch die Kraft zu lieben oder wer die Schönheit hat, dem obliegt es nicht, zu erläutern, was Liebe und Schönheit ist."

"In der Katastrophe nimmt sich das Unheil nur selten die Zeit, um für unser Gesicht die rechte Maske zu liefern."

"Eine Frau ist ein Wesen, das seine Natur gefunden hat."

"Die Phantasie trainiert man am besten durch juristische Studien. Nie hat ein Dichter die Natur so frei ausgelegt wie ein Jurist die Wirklichkeit."

"Der Glaube an Gott ist wie der ewige Beginn einer Liebe: Schweigen."