Best 239 quotes of Andre Gide on MyQuotes

Actions whose motives he cannot understand that is, actions not prompted by the hope of profit.

A desire for truth is by no means a need for certitude and it would be unwise to confuse one with the other.

An artist cannot get along without a public; and when the public is absent, what does he do? He invents it, and turning his back on his age, he looks toward the future for what the present denies.

An experience teaches only the good observer; but far from seeking a lesson in it, everyone looks for an argument in experience, and everyone interprets the conclusion in his own way.

An opinion, though it is original, does not necessarily differ from the accepted opinion; the important thing is that it does not try to conform to it.

Are you then unable to recognize unless it has the same sound as yours?

Art begins with resistance - at the point where resistance is overcome. No human masterpiece has ever been created without great labor.

Art that submits to orthodoxy, to even the soundest doctrines, but lacks imagination and deep self-expression is lost leaving only the craftsmanship.

A straight path never leads anywhere except to the objective.

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

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 my ancestors and parents most assiduously put there and that I had the greatest trouble removing.

A work of art is an exaggeration.

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

Believe in your strength and your vision. Learn to repeat to yourself, 'It all depends on me'.

Believe those who seek the truth, doubt those who find it; doubt all, but do not doubt yourself.

But can one still make resolutions when one is over forty? I live according to twenty-year-old habits.

Chastity more rarely follows fear, or a resolution, or a vow, than it is the mere effect of lack of appetite and, sometimes even, of distaste.

Christianity, above all, consoles; but there are naturally happy souls who do not need consolation. Consequently Christianity begins by making such souls unhappy, for otherwise it would have no power over them.

Clear and precise ideas are the most dangerous, for one does not dare to change them.

Complete possession is proved only by giving. All you are unable to give possesses you.

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.

Do not scorn little victories.

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

Each thought becomes an anxiety in my brain. I am becoming the ugliest of all things: a busy man.

Enduring fame is promised only to those writers who can offer to successive generations a substance constantly renewed; for every generation arrives upon the scene with its own particular hunger.

Every instant of our lives is essentially irreplaceable: you must know this in order to concentrate on life.

Every perfect action is accompanied by pleasure. By that you can tell what you ought to do.

Everything has been said before, but since nobody listens we have to keep going back and beginning all over again.

Faith can move mountains; true: mountains of stupidity.

Families, I hate you! Shut-in homes, closed doors, jealous possessors of happiness

Fish die belly upward, and rise to the surface. Its their way of falling.

From the satisfaction of desire there may arise, accompanying joy and as it were sheltering behind it, something not unlike despair.

Generally among intelligent people are found nothing but paralytics and among men of action nothing but fools.

God lies ahead. I convince myself and constantly repeat to myself that: He depends on us. It is through us that God is achieved.

Great authors are admirable in this respect: in every generation they make for disagreement. Through them we become aware of our differences.

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.

How do you know that the fruit is ripe? Simply because it leaves the branch.

How much more sensuality invites to art than does sentimentality.

Humanity cherishes its swaddling clothes; but it shall not grow up unless it can free itself from them. Turning down his mother's breast does not make the weaned child ungrateful. ... Rise up naked, valiant; make the sheaths crack; push aside the stakes; to grow straight you need no more than the thrust of your sap and the call of the sun.

I advise the young to tell themselves constantly that most often it is up to them alone.

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.

I believe that in every circumstance I have been able to see rather clearly the most advantageous course I could follow, which is very rarely the one I did follow.

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

If a young writer can refrain from writing, he shouldn’t hesitate to do so.

I find just as much profit in cultivating my hates as my loves.

If life were organized, there would be no need for art.

If one could recover the uncompromising spirit of one's youth, one's greatest indignation would be for what one has become.

If only we could lean over the soul we love and see as in a mirror the image we cast!

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

I have never produced anything good except by a long succession of slight efforts.