André Gide Quotes

If one could recover the uncompromising spirit of one's youth one's greatest indignation would be for what one has become.
André Gide
Sadness is a state of sin.
André 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.
André 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.
André Gide
Seize from every moment its unique novelty and do not prepare your joys.
André Gide
It is now and in this world that we must live.
André Gide
The world will be saved by one or two people.
André Gide
There are very few monsters who warrant the fear we have of them.
André Gide
Sadness is almost never anything but a form of fatigue.
André Gide
It is better to be hated for what you are than loved for what you are not.
André Gide
We live counterfeit lives in order to resemble the idea we first had of ourselves.
André Gide
Nothing is good for everyone but only relatively to some people.
André Gide
What I dislike least in my former self are the moments of prayer.
André Gide
Man's responsibility increases as that of the gods decreases.
André 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.
André Gide
It is better to be hated for what you are than loved for what you are not.
André Gide
We live counterfeit lives in order to resemble the idea we first had of ourselves.
André Gide
Nothing is good for everyone but only relatively to some people.
André Gide
What I dislike least in my former self are the moments of prayer.
André Gide
Man's responsibility increases as that of the gods decreases.
André 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.
André Gide
Nothing is so silly as the expression of a man who is being complimented.
André Gide
Our judgements about things vary according to the time left us to live -that we think is left us to live.
André 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.
André Gide
To win one's joy through struggle is better than to yield to melancholy.
André Gide
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.
André Gide
A straight path never leads anywhere except to the objective.
André Gide
Welcome everything that comes to you but do not long for anything else.
André Gide
Long only for what you have.
André Gide
One doesn't discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of shore for a very long time.
André Gide
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.
André Gide
Oh would that my mind could let fall its dead ideas as the tree does its withered leaves!
André Gide
A work of art is an exaggeration.
André Gide
The scholar seeks the artist finds.
André Gide
One completely overcomes only what one assimilates.
André Gide
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.
André Gide
I wished for nothing beyond her smile, and to walk with her thus, hand in hand, along a sun warmed, flower bordered path.
André Gide
Will it be here that we shall find a place which will not elude us, or which if it remains does not exert on us a culpable attraction? Or must we, leaning over the deck and watching the shores glide by, move forever onward?
André Gide
One can always find hands for a work of destruction.
André Gide
He let Julius go. There was beginning to rise in him a feeling of profound disgust--a kind of hatred almost, of himself, of Julius, of everything.
André Gide
There is a germ of revolt lying in the spirit of inquiry and critical curiosity.
André Gide
Those who complimented me were those who understood me the least.
André Gide
Poverty makes a slave out of men. In order to eat he will accept work that gives no pleasure.
André Gide
I say, "it seemed to me," for from the depths of my past childhood, there now awoke in me the glimmerings of a thousand lost sensations. The fact that I was once more aware of my senses enabled me to give them a half fearful recognition. Yes; my reawakened senses now remembered a whole ancient history of their own— recomposed for themselves a vanished past. They were alive! Alive! They had never ceased to live; they discovered that even during those early studious years they had been living their own latent, cunning life.
André Gide
Because it was natural, could he not see that it was marvelous? Poor creature!
André Gide
The most important things to say are those which often I did not think necessary for me to say — because they were too obvious.
André Gide
When I was younger, I used to make resolutions, which I imagined were virtuous. I was less anxious to be what I was, than to become what I wished to be. Now, I am not far from thinking that in irresolution lies the secret of not going old.
André Gide
She already loved me too much to see me as I was.
André Gide
In a world in which everyone cheats, it's the honest man who passes for a charlatan.
André Gide
I hoped at first to find a rather more direct comprehension of life in one or two novelists and poets; but if they really had such a comprehension, it must be confessed they did not show it; most of them, I thought, did not really live - contented themselves with appearing to live, and were on the verge of considering life merely as a vexatious hindrance to writing.
André Gide
Be faithful to that which exists within yourself.
André Gide
The secret seemed to me much more mysterious than that; it was the secret, I thought, of one who had known death; for I moved a stranger among ordinary people, like a man who has risen from the grave, and at first I merely felt rather painfully out of my element; but soon I became aware of a very different feeling.Was it pride now? Perhaps; but at any rate there was no trace of vanity mixed with it. It was rather, for the first time, the consciousness of my own worth. What separated me - distinguished me - from other people was crucial; what no one said, what no one could say but myself, that was my task to say.
André 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
André Gide
In other people's company I felt I was dull, gloomy, unwelcome, at once bored and boring...
André Gide
Nothing can make a face more impenetrable than the mask of kindliness.
André Gide
Nothing thwarts happiness so much as the memory of happiness.
André Gide
Rather than recount his life as he has lived it, he must live his life as he will recount it.
André Gide
What would be the description of happines? Nothing, except what prepares and then what destroys it, can be told.
André Gide
To tell the truth, my dear count, I must own that of all nauseating human emanations, literature is one of those which disgust me most. I can see nothing in it but compromise and flattery. And I go so far as to doubt whether it can be anything else.
André Gide
I do not want to recollect. I should be afraid of preventing the future and of allowing the past to encroach on me. It is out of the utter forgetfulness of yesterday that I create every new hour's freshness. It is never enough for me to have been happy. I do not believe in dead things and cannot distinguish between being no more and never having been.
André Gide