Andre Gide Quotes (74 Quotes)


    Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it.

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

    What would there be in a story of happiness? Only what prepares it, only what destroys it can be told.

    It is only in adventure that some people succeed in knowing themselves - in finding themselves.

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


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

    The sole art that suits me is that which, rising from unrest, tends toward serenity.

    Those who have never been ill are incapable of real sympathy for a great many misfortunes


    Old hands soil, it seems, whatever they caress, but they too have their beauty when they are joined in prayer. Young hands were made for caresses and the sheathing of love. It is a pity to make them join too soon.

    The thing I am most aware of is my limits. And this is natural for I never, or almost never, occupy the middle of my cage my whole being surges toward the bars.

    Only those things are beautiful which are inspired by madness and written by reason.


    Be faithful to that which exists within yourself.

    Seize from every moment its unique novelty, and do not prepare your joys.

    The most gifted natures are perhaps also the most trembling.

    Work and struggle and never accept an evil that you can change.


    Fish die belly upward, and rise to the surface. Its their way of falling.

    By the time a philospher answers a question weve usually forgotten what was asked.

    Man is more interesting than men. God made him and not them in his image. Each one is more precious than all.

    Nothing is more fatal to happiness than the remembrance of happiness

    I call journalism everything that was more interesting yesterday than today.

    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.


    It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for something you are not.

    One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.

    At times is it seems that I am living my life backward, and that at the approach of old age my real youth will begin. My soul was born covered with wrinkles-wrinkles that my ancestors and parents most assiduously put there and that I had the greatest trouble removing.

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

    It is essential to persuade the soldier that those he is being urged to massacre are bandits who do not deserve to live before killing other good, decent fellows like himself, his gun would fall from his hands

    Complete possession is proved only by giving. All you are unable to give possesses you.

    There are very few monsters who warrant the fear we have of them.

    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.

    The itch is a mean, unconfessable, ridiculous malady one can pity someone who is suffering someone who wants to scratch himself makes one laugh

    Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does the better.

    The most decisive actions of life are most often unconsidered actions.

    What I dislike least in my former self are the moments of prayer

    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

    "Therefore" is a word the poet must not know.

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

    I wished for nothing beyond her smile, and to walk with her thus, hand in hand, along a sun-warmed, flower-bordered path.

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

    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.

    Great authors are admirable in this respect: in every generation they make for disagreement. Through them we become aware of our differences.

    If a young writer can refrain from writing, he shouldn't hesitate to do so.

    Of some forty families I have been able to observe, I know hardly four in which the parents do not act in such a way that nothing would be more desirable for the child than to escape their influence

    It is with noble sentiments that bad literature gets written

    Society knows perfectly well how to kill a man and has methods more subtle than death

    The most decisive actions of our life I mean those that are most likely to decide the whole course of our future are, more often than not, unconsidered.

    What another would have done as well as you, do not do it. What another would have said as well as you, do not say it; what another would have written as well, do not write it. Be faithful to that which exists nowhere but in yourself-and thus make yourself indispensable.


    More Andre Gide Quotations (Based on Topics)


    Art - God - Youth - Happiness - Past - Work & Career - Actions - Life - Man - Soul - Logic - Prayers - Idea - People - Time - Society & Civilization - Joy & Excitement - Belief & Faith - Truth - View All Andre Gide Quotations

    Related Authors


    Charles Dickens - Thomas Wolfe - Robertson Davies - Miguel de Cervantes - Katherine Dunn - James Clavell - Fyodor Dostoevsky - Alistair Maclean - Alexander Solzehnitsyn - Aldous Huxley


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