|
Long only for what you have.
ANDRÉ GIDE, The Fruits of the Earth
One doesn't discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.
ANDRE GIDE, The Counterfeiters
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.
Society knows perfectly well how to kill a man and has methods more subtle than death.
ANDRE GIDE, Autumn Leaves
Sin is whatever obscures the soul.
ANDRE GIDE, The Pastoral Symphony
The artist who is after success lets himself be influenced by the public. Generally such an artist contributes nothing new, for the public acclaims only what it already knows, what it recognizes.
ANDRE GIDE, Pretexts: Reflections on Literature and Morality
Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does the better.
ANDRE GIDE, Autumn Leaves
Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it.
ANDRE GIDE, So Be It; or, The Chips Are Down
To know how to free oneself is nothing; the arduous thing is to know what to do with one's freedom.
ANDRE GIDE, Autumn Leaves
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. Like a train into which one jumps without thinking, and without asking oneself where it is going.
ANDRE GIDE, The Counterfeiters
Know thyself. A maxim as pernicious as it is ugly. Whoever studies himself arrests his own development. A caterpillar who seeks to know himself would never become a butterfly.
ANDRE GIDE, Autumn Leaves
Our deeds attach themselves to us like the flame to phosphorus. They constitute our brilliance, to be sure, but only in so far as they consume us.
Most often people seek in life occasions for persisting in their opinions rather than for educating themselves.
ANDRE GIDE, Pretexts: Reflections on Literature and Morality
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.
ANDRE GIDE, Fruits of the Earth
Too chaste a youth leads to a dissolute old age.
ANDRE GIDE, Autumn Leaves
In hell there is no other punishment than to begin over and over again the tasks left unfinished in your lifetime.
ANDRE GIDE, Autumn Leaves
The most beautiful things are those that madness prompts and reason writes.
ANDRE GIDE, Autumn Leaves
There are many things that seem impossible only so long as one does not attempt them.
The color of truth is grey.
ANDRE GIDE, Autumn Leaves
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.
ANDRE GIDE, Pretexts: Reflections on Literature and Morality
Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But since no one was listening, everything must be said again.
ANDRE GIDE, Autumn Leaves
Families, I hate you! Shut-in homes, closed doors, jealous possessions of happiness.
ANDRE GIDE, Fruits of the Earth
Nothing prevents happiness like the memory of happiness.
ANDRE GIDE, Autumn Leaves
The true hypocrite is the one who ceases to perceive his deception, the one whi lies with sincerity.
ANDRE GIDE, Autumn Leaves
A straight path never leads anywhere
except to the objective.
I have my own virtue, which I am constantly cultivating and refining by teaching myself not to tolerate in me or my surroundings anything but the exquisite.
ANDRE GIDE, Pretexts: Reflections on Literature and Morality
God depends on us. It is through us that God is achieved.
ANDRE GIDE, Autumn Leaves
I do not love men: I love what devours them.
ANDRE GIDE, Prometheus Misbound
Art begins with resistance — at the point where resistance is overcome.
ANDRE GIDE, Autumn Leaves
Let every emotion be capable becoming an intoxication to you. If what you eat fails to make you drunk, it is because you are not hungry enough.
ANDRE GIDE, Fruits of the Earth
Pay attention only to the form; emotion will come spontaneously to inhabit it. A perfect dwelling always finds an inhabitant. The artist’s business is to build the dwelling; as for the inhabitant, it is up to the reader to provide him.
ANDRE GIDE, Pretexts: Reflections on Literature and Morality
It is better to be hated for what you are than loved for what you are not.
ANDRE GUIDE, Autumn Leaves
Life eludes logic, and everything that logic alone constructs remains artificial and forced.
ANDRE GIDE, Autumn Leaves
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.
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.
Often the best in us springs from the worst in us.
ANDRE GIDE, Pretexts: Reflections on Literature and Morality
What would a narrative of happiness be like? All that can be described is what prepares it, and then what destroys it.
ANDRE GIDE, The Immoralist
Profound optimism is always on the side of the tortured.
ANDRE GIDE, Autumn Leaves
There is no feeling so simple that it is not immediately complicated and distorted by introspection.
ANDRE GIDE, Pretexts: Reflections on Literature and Morality
|
