Andre Gide Quotes

To be sure, theory is useful. But without warmth of heart and without love it bruises the very ones it claims to save.

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

It is unthinkable for a Frenchman to arrive at middle age without having syphilis and the Cross of the Legion of Honor.

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

The world will be saved by one or two people.

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

The scholar seeks truth, the artist finds.

The work of art is the exaggeration of an idea.

Sadness is a state of sin.

True eloquence forgoes eloquence.

To win ones joy through struggle is better than to yield to melancholy.

The public always prefers to be reassured. There are those whose job this is. There are only too many.

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.

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

We no longer admit any other truth than that which is expedient; for there is no worse error than the truth that may weaken the arm that is fighting.

If the flower were not attached to its stem, it would flee at the approach of man, like the insect or the bird; for the attribute of man on the earth, at least as long as he does not better understand his role, is to worry and frighten what he is not interested in taming for utilitarian purposes. Man is skillful in mistreating everything he can use

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

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

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.

He who makes great demands upon himself is naturally inclined to make great demands on others.

Man: The most complex of beings, and thus the most dependent of beings. On all that made you up, you depend.

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.

The wise man is he who constantly wonders afresh.

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.

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

Too chaste an adolescence makes for a dissolute old age. It is doubtless easier to give up something one has known than something one imagines.

He who wants a rose must respect her thorn.

Old hands soil, it seems, whatever they caress, but they too have their beauty when they are joined in prayer. Young hands were made for caresses and the sheathing of love. It is a pity to make them join too soon.

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

Other people's appetites easily appear excessive when one doesn't share them.

Atheism. There is not a single exalting and emancipating influence that does not in turn become inhibitory.

Nothing is good for everyone, but only relatively to some people.

I prefer granting with a good grace what I know I shan't be able to prevent.

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

Man's first and greatest victory must be won against the gods.

The reasons that drive me to write are many and the most important are the most secret, I think. Perhaps most of all this: to put something out of death's reach.

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.

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

Only fools don't contradict themselves

The miser puts his gold pieces into a coffer; but as soon as the coffer is closed, it is as if it were empty.

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

Please do not understand me too quickly.

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.

One is always wrong to open a conversation with the devil, for, however he goes about it, he always insists upon having the last word.

Great minds tend toward banality. It is the noblest effort of individualism. But it implies a sort of modesty, which is so rare that it is scarcely found except in the greatest, or in beggars.

Not everyone can be an orphan.

It is only in adventure that some people succeed in knowing themselves - in finding themselves.

Prejudices are the props of civilization.