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

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

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

Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.
Andre Gide

I wished for nothing beyond her smile, and to walk with her thus, hand in hand, along a sun-warmed, flower-bordered path.
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

Be faithful to that which exists within yourself.
Andre Gide

A straight path never leads anywhere except to the objective.
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

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

The color of truth is gray.
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

There are very few monsters who warrant the fear we have of them.
Andre Gide

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

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

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

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

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

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.
Andre Gide

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

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 want of logic annoys. Too much logic bores. Life eludes logic, and everything that logic alone constructs remains artificial and forced.
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

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

Sin is whatever obscures the soul.
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 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

Not everyone can be an orphan.
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

The sole art that suits me is that which, rising from unrest, tends toward serenity.
Andre Gide

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

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

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

Most quarrels amplify a misunderstanding.
Andre Gide

Nothing prevents happiness like the memory of happiness.
Andre 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.
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

Only those things are beautiful which are inspired by madness and written by reason.
Andre Gide

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

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

It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for something you are not.
Andre Gide

The most gifted natures are perhaps also the most trembling.
Andre Gide

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