Andre gide quotes

Envying another man's happiness is madness; you wouldn't know what to do with it if you had it.

Our judgements about things vary according to the time left us to live -that we think is left us to live.

Prejudices are the props of civilization.

Generally among intelligent people are found nothing but paralytics and among men of action nothing but fools.

Be faithful to that which exists nowhere but in yourself- and thus make yourself indispensable.

Understanding is the beginning of approving.

Each of us really understands in others only those feelings he is capable of producing himself.

To understand is nothing, but to be understood-that is the problem and the source of anguish. The soul throbs and would have the other know-but can not and feels isolated. Then come gestures, words, awkward explanations and material symbols for imponderable outbursts of feeling-and the soul despairs.

Clear and precise ideas are the most dangerous, for one does not dare to change them.

Understand that the only possession of any value is life.

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.

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.

When I cease to be indignant I will have begun my old age.

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

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

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

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

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

Only fools don't contradict themselves

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

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.

Often the best in us springs from the worst in us.

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

How do you know that the fruit is ripe? Simply because it leaves the branch.

We live counterfeit lives in order to resemble the idea we first had of ourselves.

There is no feeling so simple that it is not immediately complicated and distorted by introspection.

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.

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

Man! The most complex of creatures, and for this reason the most dependant of creatures. On everything that has formed you, you may depend. Do not balk at this apparent slavery....a debtor to many, you pay for your advantages by the same number of dependencies. Understand that independence is a form of poverty; that many things claim you, that many also claim kinship with you.

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

One completely overcomes only what one assimilates.

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

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

How much more sensuality invites to art than does sentimentality.

I have no use for knowledge that has not been preceded by a sensation

The wise man is astonished by anything.

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

The color of truth is gray.

It would be wisest not to worry too much about the sterile periods. They ventilate the subject and instill into it the reality of daily life.

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

In order to judge properly, one must get away somewhat from what one is judging, after having loved it. This is true of countries, of persons, and of oneself.

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.

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.

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

To know how to free oneself is nothing; the arduous thing is to know what to do with one's freedom.

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

A desire for truth is by no means a need for certitude and it would be unwise to confuse one with the other.

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.

The truth is that as soon as we are no longer obliged to earn our living, we no longer know what to do with our life and recklessly squander it.

The pettiness of a mind can be measured by the pettiness of its adoration or its blasphemy.

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

Sin is whatever obscures the soul.

Long only for what you have.

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.

An experience teaches only the good observer; but far from seeking a lesson in it, everyone looks for an argument in experience, and everyone interprets the conclusion in his own way.

It is now, and in this world, that we must live.

Fear of ridicule begets the worst cowardice.

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

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

When everything belongs to everyone, nobody will take care of anything.

He who wants a rose must respect her thorn.

To read a writer is for me not merely to get an idea of what he says, but to go off with him and travel in his company.

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

Be faithful to that which exists within yourself.

True eloquence forgoes eloquence.

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

A straight path never leads anywhere except to the objective.

I owe much to my friends; but, all things considered, it strikes me that I owe even more to my enemies. The real person springs life under a sting even better than under a caress.

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

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.

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

It is not always by plugging away at a difficulty and sticking to it that one overcomes it; often it is by working on the one next to it. Some things and some people have to be approached obliquely, at an angle.

Man's responsibility increases as that of the gods decreases.

The less intelligent the white man is, the more stupid he thinks the black.

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

It is one of life's laws that as soon as one door closes another opens. But the tragedy is we look at the closed door and disregard the open one.

When intelligent people pride themselves on not understanding, it is quite natural they should succeed better than fools.

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

Woe to these people who have no appetite for the very dish that their age serves up.

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

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.

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

The scholar seeks truth, the artist finds.

Faith can move mountains; true: mountains of stupidity.

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

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.

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.

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

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

The novelist does not long to see the lion eat grass. He realizes that one and the same God created the wolf and the lamb, then smiled, “seeing that his work was good.”

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

The wise man is he who constantly wonders afresh.

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

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

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

To love the truth is to refuse to let oneself be saddened by it.

Solitude is bearable only with God.

Most often people seek in life occasions for persisting in their opinions rather than for educating themselves.

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.

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

Nothing prevents happiness like the memory of happiness.

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

Wisdom comes not from reason but from love.

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

The world will be saved by one or two people.

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

Do not scorn little victories.

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

In other people's company I felt I was dull, gloomy, unwelcome, at once bored and boring.

I can't expect others to share my virtues. It's good enough for me if they share my vices.

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.

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

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.

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

There are admirable potentialities in every human being.

Sadness is almost never anything but a form of fatigue.

The individual never asserts himself more than when he forgets himself.

Nothing excellent can be done without leisure.

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.

It is with fine sentiments that bad literature is made. Descend to the bottom of the well if you wish to see the stars.

Do not think your truth can be found by anyone else.

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.

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

Money cannot buy happiness, but it can make you awfully comfortable while you're being miserable. Nothing prevents happiness like the memory of happiness.

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