Words matter. These are the best Andre Gide Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
The color of truth is gray.
To what a degree the same past can leave different marks – and especially admit of different interpretations.
Welcome anything that comes to you, but do not long for anything else.
Know thyself. A maxim as pernicious as it is ugly. Whoever studies himself arrest his own development. A caterpillar who seeks to know himself would never become a butterfly.
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.
It is good to follow one’s own bent, so long as it leads upward.
Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does the better.
Nothing prevents happiness like the memory of happiness.
One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.
Fish die belly upward, and rise to the surface. Its their way of falling.
Everything has been said before, but since nobody listens we have to keep going back and beginning all over again.
The most important things to say are those which often I did not think necessary for me to say – because they were too obvious.
It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for something you are not.
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.
It is unthinkable for a Frenchman to arrive at middle age without having syphilis and the Cross of the Legion of Honor.
It is only in adventure that some people succeed in knowing themselves – in finding themselves.
Art is the collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does the better.
Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it.
Great authors are admirable in this respect: in every generation they make for disagreement. Through them we become aware of our differences.
Not everyone can be an orphan.
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.
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.
Art begins with resistance – at the point where resistance is overcome. No human masterpiece has ever been created without great labor.
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.
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.
There is no prejudice that the work of art does not finally overcome.
The most beautiful things are those that madness prompts and reason writes.
Be faithful to that which exists within yourself.
The most decisive actions of life are most often unconsidered actions.
What would there be in a story of happiness? Only what prepares it, only what destroys it can be told.
‘Therefore’ is a word the poet must not know.
Sin is whatever obscures the soul.
The want of logic annoys. Too much logic bores. Life eludes logic, and everything that logic alone constructs remains artificial and forced.
