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Quotes by Andre Gide


Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it.
– Andre Gide
A straight path never leads anywhere except to the objective.
– Andre Gide
Are you then unable to recognize unless it has the same sound as yours?
– Andre Gide
Art begins with resistance - at the point where resistance is overcome. No human masterpiece has ever been created without great labor.
– Andre Gide
Art is the collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does the better.
– Andre Gide
At times is it seems that I am living my life backward, and that at the approach of old age my real youth will begin. My soul was born covered with wrinkles-wrinkles that my ancestors and parents most assiduously put there and that I had the greatest trouble removing.
– Andre Gide
Be faithful to that which exists within yourself.
– Andre Gide
Complete possession is proved only by giving. All you are unable to give possesses you.
– Andre Gide
Everything has been said before, but since nobody listens we have to keep going back and beginning all over again.
– Andre Gide
Families, I hate you! Shut-in homes, closed doors, jealous possessors of happiness.
– Andre Gide
Fish die belly upward, and rise to the surface. Its their way of falling.
– Andre Gide
Great authors are admirable in this respect: in every generation they make for disagreement. Through them we become aware of our differences.
– Andre Gide
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
In hell there is no other punishment than to begin over and over again the tasks left unfinished in your lifetime.
– 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
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
It is only in adventure that some people succeed in knowing themselves - in finding themselves.
– Andre Gide
It is unthinkable for a Frenchman to arrive at middle age without having syphilis and the Cross of the Legion of Honor.
– Andre Gide
Know thyself! A maxim as pernicious as it is ugly. Whoever observes himself arrests his own development. A caterpillar who wanted to know itself well would never become a butterfly.
– Andre Gide
Man is more interesting than men. God made him and not them in his image. Each one is more precious than all.
– Andre Gide
Most quarrels amplify a misunderstanding.
– Andre Gide
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
Not everyone can be an orphan.
– Andre Gide
Nothing is so silly as the expression of a man who is being complimented.
– Andre Gide
Nothing prevents happiness like the memory of happiness.
– Andre Gide
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.
– Andre Gide
Only those things are beautiful which are inspired by madness and written by reason.
– Andre Gide
Sin is whatever obscures the soul.
– Andre Gide
The abominable effort to take one's sins with one to paradise.
– Andre Gide
The most decisive actions of life are most often unconsidered actions.
– Andre Gide
The most gifted natures are perhaps also the most trembling.
– Andre 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.
– Andre Gide
The sole art that suits me is that which, rising from unrest, tends toward serenity.
– 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
There are very few monsters who warrant the fear we have of them.
– Andre Gide
There is no prejudice that the work of art does not finally overcome.
– Andre Gide
Therefore is a word the poet must not know.
– 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
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.
– Andre Gide
To what a degree the same past can leave different marks - and especially admit of different interpretations.
– Andre Gide
Welcome anything that comes to you, but do not long for anything else.
– Andre 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.
– Andre Gide
What would there be in a story of happiness? Only what prepares it, only what destroys it can be told.
– Andre Gide
Work and struggle and never accept an evil that you can change.
– Andre Gide
Dare to be yourself.
– Andre Gide
It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not.
– Andre Gide
Obtain from yourself all that makes complaining useless. No longer implore from others what you yourself can obtain.
– Andre Gide
One doesn't discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.
– Andre Gide
So long as we live among men, let us cherish humanity.
– Andre Gide
There are admirable potentialities in every human being. Believe in your strength and your youth. Learn to repeat endlessly to yourself, 'It all depends on me.'
– Andre Gide
The color of truth is gray.
– Andre Gide