André Gide Quotes

71 Sourced Quotes

Sadness is almost never anything but a form of fatigue.

André Gide
In my present insistence on high standards you will see that there is less self-indulgence than resolve and application. I do not let the Christian monopolize the ideal of perfection. 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.

André Gide
When intelligent people pride themselves on not understanding, it is quite natural they should succeed better than fools.

André Gide
A straight path never leads anywhere except to the objective.

André Gide
We prefer to go deformed and distorted all our lives rather than not resemble the portrait of ourselves which we ourselves have first drawn. It's absurd. We run the risk of warping what's best in us

André Gide
The abominable effort to take one's sins with one to paradise.

André Gide
At times it seems to me that I am living my life backwards, 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.

André Gide
Sin is whatever obscures the soul.

André Gide
True intelligence very readily conceives of an intelligence superior to its own; and this is why truly intelligent men are modest.

André Gide
One can't correct what one does. It's the power of revising that makes writing such a colourless affair.

André 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.

André Gide
Families, I hate you! Shut-in homes, closed doors, jealous possessions of happiness.

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

André Gide
When people felt they had a right to seek out Christ before the torment, and in the fullness of his joy—it was too late; the cross had overcome Christ himself; it was Christ crucified that people continued to see and teach. And thus it is that religion came to plunge the world into gloom.

André Gide
Nothing is more fatal to happiness than the remembrance of happiness.

André Gide
Often the best in us springs from the worst in us.

André Gide
O my dearest and most lovable thought, why should I try further to legitimize your birth?

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

André 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.

André Gide
What would there be in a story of happiness? Only what prepares it, only what destroys it can be told.

André Gide
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.

André 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.

André 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.

André Gide
It is impermissible under any circumstances for morals to sink as low as communism has done. No one can begin to imagine the tragedy of humanity, of morality, of religion and of freedoms in the land of communism, where man has been debased beyond belief.

André Gide
We call happiness a certain set of circumstances that makes joy possible. But we call joy that state of mind and emotions that needs nothing to feel happy.

André Gide
The true hypocrite is the one who ceases to perceive his deception, the one who lies with sincerity.

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

André Gide
The truth is, I hoped the cure would dislike me. I tried to think of disagreeable things to say to him — I could hit on nothing that wasn't charming. It's wonderful how hard I find it not to be fascinating.

André Gide
Wisdom comes not from reason but from love.

André Gide
One does not discover new continents without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.

André Gide