"We are always repeating ancestral signs which are quite useless now. When a great actress wants to express hate she draws back her charming lips and shows her canine teeth, an unconscious sign of cannibalism. We shake hands with a friend to prevent him using it to strike us, and we take off our hats because our ancestors used to humbly offer their heads, to the bigwigs of those days, to be cut off."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Ch. 5
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Andr%C3%A9_Maurois
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
André Maurois
210 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by André Maurois →
Related Quotes
"Le mélange de l'admiration et de la piété est une des plus sûres recettes de l'affection."
"C'est au moyen âge...que nous devons les deux pires inventions de l’humanité: l’amour romanesque et la poudre à canon."
"After 1930, political theorists had begun to realize that every democracy—being a government of public opinion—is lar…"
"What shall we know of our death? Either the soul is immortal and we shall not die, or it perishes with the flesh and …"
"To interest a Frenchman in a boxing match you must tell him that his national honor is at stake. To interest an Engli…"
"The true sporting spirit has always something religious about it."
"We don't go to school to learn, but to be soaked in the prejudices of our class, without which we should be useless a…"
"It is unprecedented...for the men who made a revolution to remain in power after it is over. Yet one still finds revo…"
"L'amour de l'humanité est un état pathologique d’origine sexuelle qui se produit fréquemment à l'époque de la puberté…"
"The whole reason of this War is because the Germans have no sense of humor."