Andre Gide Quotes & Sayings

I was still filled as before with an evil curiosity. There was a mystery about the existence of each one of them. I always felt that a part of their lives was concealed. What did they do when I was not there? I refused to believe that they had not better ways of amusing themselves. And I credited each of them with a secret which I pertinaciously tried to discover. — Andre Gide

Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore. — Andre Gide

The world will be saved by one or two people. — Andre Gide

Other people's appetites easily appear excessive when one doesn't share them. — Andre Gide

Nothing prevents happiness like the memory of happiness. — Andre Gide

Nothing is so silly as the expression of a man who is being complimented. — Andre Gide

How would one tell a story about happiness? One can only tell of the origins of happiness and its destruction. — Andre Gide

In hell there is no other punishment than to begin over and over again the tasks left unfinished in your lifetime. — Andre Gide

Through loyalty to the past, our mind refuses to realize that tomorrow's joy is possible only if today's makes way for it; that each wave owes the beauty of its line only to the withdrawal of the preceding one. — Andre Gide

Fear of ridicule begets the worst cowardice. — Andre Gide

The most beautiful things are those that madness prompts and reason writes. — Andre Gide

Pay attention only to the form; emotion will come spontaneously to inhabit it. A perfect dwelling place always finds an inhabitant. — Andre Gide

The very act of sacrifice magnifies the one who sacrifices himself to the point where his sacrifice is much more costly to humanity than would have been the loss of those for whom he is sacrificing himself. But in his abnegation lies the secret of his grandeur. — Andre Gide

From the satisfaction of desire there may arise, accompanying joy and as it were sheltering behind it, something not unlike despair. — Andre Gide

It is good to follow one's own bent, so long as it leads upward. — Andre Gide

Fish die belly upward, and rise to the surface. It's their way of falling. — Andre Gide

We prefer to go deformed and distorted all our lives rather than not resemble the portrait of ourselves which we ourselves have first drawn. It's absurd. We run the risk of warping what's best in us — Andre Gide

Mozart's joy is made of serenity, and a phrase of his music is like a calm thought; his simplicity is merely purity. It is a crystalline thing in which all the emotions play a role, but as if already celestially transposed. Moderation consists in feeling emotions as the angels do. — Andre Gide

It is only through restraint that man can manage not to suppress himself. — Andre Gide

The greatest intelligence is precisely the one that suffers the most from its own limitations. — Andre Gide

Christianity, above all, consoles; but there are naturally happy souls who do not need consolation. Consequently Christianity begins by making such souls unhappy, for otherwise it would have no power over them. — Andre Gide

We no longer admit any other truth than that which is expedient; for there is no worse error than the truth that may weaken the arm that is fighting. — Andre Gide

Whoever starts out toward the unknown must consent to venture alone. — Andre Gide

When I found myself alone in my bedroom that evening, an intolerable anguish embraced my soul and body. My boredom had become almost like fear. A wall of rain separates me from the rest of the world, far from all passion, far from life, and is closing me in a gray nightmare. I am with strange beings who are barely human, who have cold and discolored blood, and whose hearts stopped beating a long time ago. I opened my suitcase and looked at my train schedule. A train! At any hour of the day or night, it does not matter! I am smothering here. My — Andre Gide

You have to let other people be right' was his answer to their insults. 'It consoles them for not being anything else. — Andre Gide

True intelligence very readily conceives of an intelligence superior to its own; and this is why truly intelligent men are modest. — Andre Gide

The most decisive actions of life are most often unconsidered actions. — Andre Gide

Do not scorn little victories. — Andre Gide

The self requires a story. — Andre Gide

For what use is it to forbid what we can't prevent? If books are forbidden, children read them on the sly. — Andre Gide

Each thought becomes an anxiety in my brain. I am becoming the ugliest of all things: a busy man. — Andre Gide

The finest virtues can become deformed with age. The precise mind becomes finicky; the thrifty man, miserly; the cautious man, timorous; the man of imagination, fanciful. Even perseverance ends up in a sort of stupidity. Just as, on the other hand, being too willing to understand too many opinions, too diverse ways of seeing, constancy is lost and the mind goes astray in a restless fickleness. — Andre Gide

What was doubly disconcerting for me was that he showed such extraordinary and precocious insight in describing his own feelings that I felt he was making my own confession. — Andre Gide

The abominable effort to take one's sins with one to paradise. — Andre Gide

Whither should we aim if not towards God? — Andre Gide

The priest accepted me, I accepted the priest, so everything went off smoothly. — Andre Gide

No encounter occured that day, and I was glad of it; I took out of my pocket a little Homer I had not opened since leaving Marseilles, reread three lines of the Odyssey, learned them by heart; then, finding sufficient sustenance in their rhythm and reveling in them at leisure, I closed the book and remained, trembling, more alive than I had thought possible, my mind numb with happiness. — Andre Gide

One completely overcomes only what one assimilates. — Andre Gide

Laws and rules of conduct are for the state of childhood; education is an emancipation. — Andre Gide

One can always find hands for a work of destruction. — Andre Gide

Actions whose motives he cannot understand that is, actions not prompted by the hope of profit. — Andre Gide

Humanity cherishes its swaddling clothes; but it shall not grow up unless it can free itself from them. Turning down his mother's breast does not make the weaned child ungrateful ... Rise up naked, valiant; make the sheaths crack; push aside the stakes; to grow straight you need no more than the thrust of your sap and the call of the sun. — Andre Gide

Understanding is the beginning of approving. — Andre Gide

Often with good sentiments we produce bad literature. — Andre Gide

Better to be silent and thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt. — Andre Gide

... the facts of history all appeared to me like specimens in a herbarium, permanently dried, so that it was easy to forget they had once upon a time been juicy with sap and alive in the sun. — Andre Gide

Nothing is good for everyone, but only relatively to some people. — Andre Gide

The capacity to get free is nothing; the capacity to be free is the task. — Andre Gide

True kindness presupposes the faculty of imagining as one's own the suffering and joys of others. — Andre Gide

It seems to me that had I not known Dostoevsky or Nietzsche or Freud or X or Z, I should have thought just as I did, and that I found in them rather an authorization than an awakening. Above all, they taught me to cease doubting, to cease fearing my thoughts, and to let those thoughts lead me to those lands that were not uninhabitable because after all I found them already there . — Andre Gide

To what a degree the same past can leave different marks - and especially admit of different interpretations. — Andre Gide

I have never produced anything good except by a long succession of slight efforts. — Andre Gide

I am lost if I attempt to take count of chronology. When I think over the past, I am like a person whose eyes cannot properly measure distances and is liable to think things extremely remote which on examination prove to be quite near. — Andre Gide

The only real education comes from what goes counter to you. — Andre Gide

Most often it happens that one attributes to others only the feelings of which one is capable oneself. — Andre Gide

There are admirable potentialities in every human being. — Andre Gide

Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But since no one was listening, everything must be said again. — Andre Gide

What eludes logic is the most precious element in us, and one can draw nothing from a syllogism that the mind has not put there in advance. — Andre Gide

He who makes great demands upon himself is naturally inclined to make great demands on others. — Andre Gide

I am still clumsy; I should aim to be clumsy only when I wish to be. I must learn to keep silent ... I must learn to take myself seriously; and not to hold any smug opinion of myself. To have more mobile eyes and a less mobile face. To keep a straight face when I make a joke. Not to applaud every joke made by others. Not to show the same colorless geniality toward everyone. To disconcert at the right moment by keeping a poker face. Especially never to praise two people in the same way, but rather to keep toward each individual a distinct manner from which I would never deviate without intending to. — Andre Gide

The scholar seeks truth, the artist finds. — Andre Gide

It is better to fail at your own life than to succeed at someone else's. — Andre Gide

Often the best in us springs from the worst in us. — Andre Gide

Once I had made my mind up, I could see nothing but the advantages. — Andre Gide

Prejudices are the props of civilization. — Andre Gide

Only fools don't contradict themselves — Andre Gide

Dare to be yourself — Andre Gide

Art that submits to orthodoxy, to even the soundest doctrines, but lacks imagination and deep self-expression is lost leaving only the craftsmanship. — Andre Gide

Everything's already been said, but since nobody was listening, we have to start again. — Andre Gide

We call "happiness" a certain set of circumstances that makes joy possible. But we call joy that state of mind and emotions that needs nothing to feel happy. — Andre Gide

"Let the dead bury the dead." There is not a single word of Christ to which the Christian religion has paid less attention. — Andre Gide

Art begins with resistance - at the point where resistance is overcome. No human masterpiece has ever been created without great labor. — Andre Gide

An unprejudiced mind is probably the rarest thing in the world; to nonprejudice I attach the greatest value. — Andre Gide

It is the special quality of love not to be able to remain stationary, to be obliged to increase under pain of diminishing ... — Andre Gide

I do not love men: I love what devours them. — Andre Gide

The miser puts his gold pieces into a coffer; but as soon as the coffer is closed, it is as if it were empty. — Andre Gide

Solitude is bearable only with God. — Andre Gide

Those [who] assiduously fabricate for themselves a self-conscious originality, and after having made a choice of certain practices, their principal preoccupation is never to depart from them, to remain for ever on their guard and allow themselves not a moment's relaxation. — Andre Gide

I find just as much profit in cultivating my hates as my loves. — Andre Gide

Then you think that one can keep a hopeless love in one's heart for so long as that? ... And that life can breathe upon it every day, without extinguishing it? — Andre Gide

A man thinks he owns things, and it is he who is owned — Andre Gide

The important thing is being capable of emotions, but to experience only one's own would be a sorry limitation. — Andre Gide

Life was nothing other than what came and went with each passing moment. — Andre Gide

An artist cannot get along without a public; and when the public is absent, what does he do? He invents it, and turning his back on his age, he looks toward the future for what the present denies. — Andre Gide

No theory is good unless it permits, not rest, but the greatest work. No theory is good except on condition that one use it to go on beyond. — Andre Gide

Through fear of resembling one another, through horror of having to submit, through uncertainty as well, through skepticism and complexity, there is a multitude of individual little beliefs for the triumph of strange little individuals. — Andre Gide

There are many things that seem impossible only so long as one does not attempt them. — Andre Gide

After much searching I have found the thing that sets me apart: a sort of stubborn attachment to evil. — Andre Gide

The great artist is one whom constraint exalts, for whom the obstacle is a springboard. — Andre Gide

Yet I'm sure there's something more to be read in a man. People dare not
they dare not turn the page. The laws of mimicry
I call them the laws of fear. People are afraid to find themselves alone, and don't find themselves at all. I hate this moral agoraphobia
it's the worst kind of cowardice. You can't create something without being alone. But who's trying to create here? What seems different in yourself: that's the one rare thing you possess, the one thing which gives each of us his worth; and that's just what we try to suppress. We imitate. And we claim to love life. — Andre Gide

Drunkenness is never anything but a substitute for happiness. — Andre Gide

Man is extraordinarily clever in preventing himself from being happy; it would seem that the less able he is to endure misfortune the more apt he is to attach himself to it. — Andre Gide

Welcome anything that comes to you, but do not long for anything else. — Andre Gide

'Therefore' is a word the poet must not know. — Andre Gide

Believe in your strength and your vision. Learn to repeat to yourself, 'It all depends on me'. — Andre Gide

A work of art is an exaggeration. — Andre Gide

I love life enough to prefer to live it awake. — Andre Gide

In order to be utterly happy the only thing necessary is to refrain from comparing this moment with other moments in the past, which I often did not fully enjoy because I was comparing them with other moments of the future. — Andre Gide

It is easier to lead men to combat, stirring up their passion, than to restrain them and direct them toward the patient labors of peace. — Andre Gide

Man's first and greatest victory must be won against the gods. — Andre Gide