André Gide Quotes - Page 2

I intend to bring you strength, joy, courage, perspicacity, defiance.
André Gide
Most people believe it is only by constraint they can get any good out of themselves, and so they live in a state of psychological distortion. It is his own self that each of them is most afraid of resembling. Each of them sets up a pattern and imitates it; he doesn't even choose the pattern he imitates: he accepts a pattern that has been chosen for him. And yet I verily believe there are other things to be read in man. But people don't dare to - they don't dare to turn the page. Laws of imitation! Laws of fear, I call them. The fear of finding oneself alone - that is what they suffer from - and so they don't find themselves at all. I detest such moral agoraphobia - the most odious cowardice I call it. Why, one always has to be alone to invent anything - but they don't want to invent anything. The part in each of us that we feel is different from other people is just the part that is rare, the part that makes our special value - and that is the very thing people try to suppress. They go on imitating. And yet they think they love life.
André Gide
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.
André Gide
One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.
André Gide
Do you know why our poetry today and especially our philosophy are such dead issues? Because they've cut themselves off from life. Now, Greece idealized on life's own level: an artist's life was already a poetic achievement; a philosopher's life was an enactment of his philosophy; and when they were a part of life that way, instead of ignoring each other, philosophy could nourish poetry, poetry express philosophy, and together achieve an admirable persuasiveness. Today beauty no longer acts; and action no longer bothers about being beautiful; and wisdom operates on the sidelines.
André Gide
I have always thought that great artists were those who dared to confer the right of beauty on things so natural that people say on seeing them, "Why did I never realize before that that was beautiful too?
André Gide
This is my thesis: Do you know what is needful to turn an honest man into a rogue! A change of scene--a moment's forgetfulness suffice.
André Gide
There's no better cure for the fear of taking after one's father, than not to know who he is.
André Gide
Fear of ridicule begets the worst cowardice.
André 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.
André Gide
He who wants a rose must respect her thorn.
André Gide
Most often people seek in life occasions for persisting in their opinions rather than for educating themselves.
André 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.
André Gide
Only those things are beautiful which are inspired by madness and written by reason.
André Gide
It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not.
André Gide
The true hypocrite is the one who ceases to perceive his deception, the one who lies with sincerity.
André Gide
I do not love men: I love what devours them.
André Gide
Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.
André Gide
You can never cross the ocean until you have the courage to lose sight of the shore
André 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.
André Gide
Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it.
André Gide
The color of truth is grey.
André Gide
God depends on us. It is through us that God is achieved.
André Gide
What would a narrative of happiness be like? All that can be described is what prepares it, and then what destroys it.
André Gide
Those who have eyes…do not know their happiness.
André Gide
But I think there comes a point in love, a unique moment which later on the soul seeks in vain to surpass, and that the effort to revive such happiness depletes it; that nothing thwarts happiness so much as the memory of happiness.
André Gide