Andre Gide quotes
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“Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.”
-- Andre Gide -
“It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for something you are not.”
-- Andre Gide -
“One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.”
-- Andre Gide -
“A straight path never leads anywhere except to the objective.”
-- Andre Gide -
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“What thwarts us and demands of us the greatest effort is also what can teach us most.”
-- Andre Gide -
“Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it.”
-- Andre Gide -
“Be faithful to that which exists within yourself.”
-- Andre Gide -
“Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does the better.”
-- Andre Gide -
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“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.”
-- Andre Gide -
“What would there be in a story of happiness? Only what prepares it, only what destroys it can be told.”
-- Andre Gide -
“Nothing is so silly as the expression of a man who is being complimented.”
-- 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 -
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“Nothing prevents happiness like the memory of happiness.”
-- Andre Gide -
“The want of logic annoys. Too much logic bores. Life eludes logic, and everything that logic alone constructs remains artificial and forced.”
-- Andre Gide -
“Nothing is more fatal to happiness than the remembrance of happiness.”
-- Andre Gide -
“But can one still make resolutions when one is over forty? I live according to twenty-year-old habits.”
-- Andre Gide -
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“It is with noble sentiments that bad literature gets written.”
-- Andre Gide -
“Complete possession is proved only by giving. All you are unable to give possesses you.”
-- Andre Gide -
“Fear of ridicule begets the worst cowardice.”
-- Andre Gide -
“It is now, and in this world, that we must live.”
-- Andre Gide -
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“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.”
-- 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 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.”
-- Andre Gide -
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“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.”
-- Andre Gide -
“The most beautiful things are those that madness prompts and reason writes.”
-- Andre Gide -
“Man's responsibility increases as that of the gods decreases.”
-- Andre Gide -
“Everything has been said before, but since nobody listens we have to keep going back and beginning all over again.”
-- Andre Gide -
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“There are very few monsters who warrant the fear we have of them.”
-- Andre Gide -
“Only those things are beautiful which are inspired by madness and written by reason.”
-- 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 -
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“It is only in adventure that some people succeed in knowing themselves - in finding themselves.”
-- 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 -
“Seize from every moment its unique novelty, and do not prepare your joys.”
-- Andre Gide -
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“Art begins with resistance - at the point where resistance is overcome. No human masterpiece has ever been created without great labor.”
-- Andre Gide -
“It is good to follow one's own bent, so long as it leads upward.”
-- Andre Gide -
“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.”
-- Andre Gide -
“Often with good sentiments we produce bad literature.”
-- Andre Gide -
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“Man is more interesting than men. God made him and not them in his image. Each one is more precious than all.”
-- Andre Gide -
“Do not do what someone else could do as well as you. Do not say, do not write what someone else could say, could write as well as you. Care for nothing in yourself but what you feel exists nowhere else. And, out of yourself create, impatiently or patiently, the most irreplaceable of beings.”
-- Andre Gide -
“Be faithful to that which exists nowhere but in yourself- and thus make yourself indispensable.”
-- Andre Gide -
“Whoever starts out toward the unknown must consent to venture alone.”
-- Andre Gide -
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“Sadness is almost never anything but a form of fatigue.”
-- Andre Gide -
“To know how to free oneself is nothing; the arduous thing is to know what to do with one's freedom.”
-- Andre GideSource : Andre Gide (2015). “The Immoralist”, p.8, Lulu Press, Inc
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“When intelligent people pride themselves on not understanding, it is quite natural they should succeed better than fools.”
-- Andre Gide -
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“The most beaten paths are certainly the surest, but do not hope to start much game on them.”
-- Andre Gide -
“I wished for nothing beyond her smile, and to walk with her thus, hand in hand, along a sun warmed, flower bordered path.”
-- Andre Gide -
“We should enjoy this summer, flower by flower, as if it were to be the last one we’ll see.”
-- Andre Gide -
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“Understand that the only possession of any value is life.”
-- Andre Gide -
“The capacity to get free is nothing; the capacity to be free is the task.”
-- Andre Gide -
“Every instant of our lives is essentially irreplaceable: you must know this in order to concentrate on life.”
-- 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 -
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“I prefer granting with a good grace what I know I shan't be able to prevent.”
-- Andre Gide -
“An unprejudiced mind is probably the rarest thing in the world; to nonprejudice I attach the greatest value.”
-- Andre Gide -
“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.”
-- Andre Gide -
“A man thinks he owns things, and it is he who is owned”
-- Andre Gide -
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“They establish distinctions and reserves which I cannot apply to myself, for I exist only as a whole; my only claim is to be natural, and the pleasure I feel in an action, I take as a sign that I ought to do it.”
-- 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 -
“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 -
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“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 -
“Profound optimism is always on the side of the tortured.”
-- Andre Gide
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