Love Quote by Andre Maurois

Taste is personal, but Maurois needles the particular kind of arrogance that blooms when we forget that. His line works because it collapses two supposedly elevated realms - literature and love - into the same embarrassing human reflex: the urge to judge someone else’s desire as if it were a solvable riddle. We’re not merely surprised by other people’s choices; we’re “astonished,” a word that carries a faint, comic indignation. Why on earth would you pick that book, that person?

The intent is gently corrective. Maurois, a novelist and biographer steeped in the psychology of attachment, is pointing out that preference isn’t a debate you can win with better arguments. We like to imagine our tastes are earned - the result of discernment, culture, good sense. Seeing someone cherish a “lesser” novel or fall for a baffling partner threatens that self-image. Their choice implies an alternate map of value, and our astonishment is really defensive: if their devotion is sincere, maybe our standards aren’t as universal as we pretend.

The subtext is also flattering in an uncomfortable way. Astonishment reveals how much we expect our private hierarchies to be shared. We want consensus not only on what’s good, but on what’s lovable. Maurois slips in a democratic punchline: other people’s interior lives do not owe us legibility.

Context matters: writing in a 20th-century Europe obsessed with canons, class markers, and the social signaling of “good taste,” Maurois offers a quiet antidote. He’s reminding readers that both reading and loving are forms of intimacy - and intimacy is never fully explainable from the outside.