Quotes By Andre Gide

To what a degree the same past can leave different marks - and especially admit of different interpretations.

Art is the collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does the better.

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

The most gifted natures are perhaps also the most trembling.

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.

Nothing is so silly as the expression of a man who is being complimented.

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.

Not everyone can be an orphan.

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.

Welcome anything that comes to you, but do not long for anything else.

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.

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

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

There is no prejudice that the work of art does not finally overcome.

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.

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

Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it.

"Therefore" is a word the poet must not know.

A straight path never leads anywhere except to the objective.

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.

Man is more interesting than men. God made him and not them in his image. Each one is more precious than all.

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

Sin is whatever obscures the soul.

In hell there is no other punishment than to begin over and over again the tasks left unfinished in your lifetime.

God depends on us. It is through us that God is achieved.

Nothing prevents happiness like the memory of happiness.

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

The most beautiful things are those that madness prompts and reason writes.

The most decisive actions of life are most often unconsidered actions.

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.