Andre Gide Quotes

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

One doesn't discover new lands without consenting to lose sight, for a very long time, of the shore.

He who wants a rose must respect her thorn.

The true hypocrite is the one who ceases to perceive his deception, the one who lies with sincerity.

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

Everything has been said before, but since nobody listens we have to keep going back and beginning all over again.

A straight path never leads anywhere except to the objective.

We should enjoy this summer, flower by flower, as if it were to be the last one we’ll see.

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

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

Be faithful to that which exists within yourself.

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

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.

Throw away my book: you must understand that it represents only one of a thousand attitudes. You must find your own. If someone else could have done something as well as you, don’t do it. If someone else could have said something as well as you, don’t say it—or written something as well as you, don’t write it. Grow fond only of that which you can find nowhere but in yourself, and create out of yourself, impatiently or patiently, ah! that most irreplaceable of beings.

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.

How much more sensuality invites to art than does sentimentality.

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

What thwarts us and demands of us the greatest effort is also what can teach us most.

Know that joy is rarer, more difficult, and more beautiful than sadness. Once you make this all-important discovery, you must embrace joy as a moral obligation.

A caterpillar who seeks to know himself would never become a butterfly

What seems different in yourself; that's the rare thing you possess. The one thing that gives each of us his worth, and that's just what we try to suppress. And we claim to love life.

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.

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.

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

Believe those who seek the truth, doubt those who find it; doubt all, but do not doubt yourself.

The most gifted natures are perhaps also the most trembling.

The color of truth is gray.

Only fools don't contradict themselves

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

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

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.

Know thyself. A maxim as pernicious as it is ugly. Whoever studies himself arrest his own development. A caterpillar who seeks to know himself would never become a butterfly.

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.

The most subtle art, the strongest and deepest art - supreme art - is the one that does not at first allow itself to be recognized.

Sadness is almost never anything but a form of fatigue.

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

Sin is whatever obscures the soul.

There's a law in life: whenever a door closes, a new one will open.

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

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

It is often so: the harder it is to hear, the more a truth is worth saying.

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.

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

Every instant of our lives is essentially irreplaceable: you must know this in order to concentrate on life.

The want of logic annoys. Too much logic bores. Life eludes logic, and everything that logic alone constructs remains artificial and forced.

Understanding is the beginning of approving.

But can one still make resolutions when one is over forty? I live according to twenty-year-old habits.

It is unthinkable for a Frenchman to arrive at middle age without having syphilis and the Cross of the Legion of Honor.

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

One should want only one thing and want it constantly. Then one is sure of getting it. But I desire everything, and consequently get nothing.