Gide Quotes

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

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

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

Be faithful to that which exists within yourself.

Everything's already been said, but since nobody was listening, we have to start again.

I do not love men: I love what devours them.

The color of truth is grey.

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

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

Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But since no one was listening, everything must be said again.

Please do not understand me too quickly.

Envying another man's happiness is madness; you wouldn't know what to do with it if you had it.

He who wants a rose must respect her thorn.

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

There are many things that seem impossible only so long as one does not attempt them.

You have to let other people be right' was his answer to their insults. 'It consoles them for not being anything else.

When we ask for advice, we are usually looking for an accomplice

You can never cross the ocean until you have the courage to lose sight of the shore

Only fools don't contradict themselves

Know that joy is rarer, more difficult, and more beautiful than sadness. Once you make this all-important discovery, you must embrace joy as a moral obligation.

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.

Fear of ridicule begets the worst cowardice.

Work and struggle and never accept an evil that you can change.

Dare to be yourself

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

Trust those who seek the truth but doubt those who say they have found it.

Fish die belly upward, and rise to the surface. It's their way of falling.

On ne découvre pas de terre nouvelle sans consentir à perdre de vue, d'abord et longtemps, tout rivage. (One doesn't discover new lands without consenting to lose sight, for a very long time, of the shore.)

Then you think that one can keep a hopeless love in one's heart for so long as that?...And that life can breathe upon it every day, without extinguishing it?

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

Wisdom comes not from reason but from love.

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

Profound optimism is always on the side of the tortured.

What would a narrative of happiness be like? All that can be described is what prepares it, and then what destroys it.

A man thinks he owns things, and it is he who is owned

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

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.

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.

We should enjoy this summer, flower by flower, as if it were to be the last one we’ll see.

are my light and you gide my way

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

Ante ciertos libros, uno se pregunta: ¿quién los leerá? Y ante ciertas personas uno se pregunta: ¿qué leerán? Y al fin, libros y personas se encuentran.

In other people's company I felt I was dull, gloomy, unwelcome, at once bored and boring...

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

The truth is that as soon as we are no longer obliged to earn our living, we no longer know what to do with our life and recklessly squander it.

Sadness is almost never anything but a form of fatigue.

The capacity to get free is nothing; the capacity to be free is the task.

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

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

To know how to free oneself is nothing; the arduous thing is to know what to do with one's freedom

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

Gide and I have attained such perfect intellectual communion that I experience the appropriate labor pains for every thought he gives birth to!

The most important things to say are those which often I did not think necessary for me to say — because they were too obvious.

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

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

Poverty makes a slave out of men. In order to eat he will accept work that gives no pleasure.

I exist only as a whole; my only claim is to be natural, and the pleasure I feel in an action, I take as a sign that I ought to do it.

Loneliness is such an omnipotent and painful threat to many persons that they have little conception of the positive values of solitude, and even at times are very frightened at the prospect of being alone. Many people suffer from “the fear of finding oneself alone,” remarks André Gide, “and so they don’t find themselves at all.

Parce que ma bouche se tait, pensez-vous que mon coeur se repose?

In order to be utterly happy the only thing necessary is to refrain from comparing this moment with other moments in the past, which I often did not fully enjoy because I was comparing them with other moments of the future.

Understand that the only possession of any value is life.

ناتانائیل! ای کاش عظمت در نگاه تو باشد نه در آنچه بدان می نگری...

Most often people seek in life occasions for persisting in their opinions rather than for educating themselves.

After much searching I have found the thing that sets me apart: a sort of stubborn attachment to evil.

Existing is occupation enough.

The most beaten paths are certainly the surest, but do not hope to start much game on them.

There's no better cure for the fear of taking after one's father, than not to know who he is.

The reasons that drive me to write are many and the most important are the most secret, I think. Perhaps most of all this: to put something out of death's reach.

One must allow other people to be right," he used to say when he was insulted, "It consoles them for not being anything else.

The novelist does not long to see the lion eat grass. He realizes that one and the same God created the wolf and the lamb, then smiled, "seeing that his work was good".

I like life well enough to want to live it awake

I have no use for knowledge that has not been preceded by a sensation

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 prefer granting with a good grace what I know I shan't be able to prevent.

Croyez ceux qui cherchent la vérité, doutez de ceux qui la trouvent.

I intend to bring you strength, joy, courage, perspicacity, defiance.

The very things that separated me and distinguished me from other people were what mattered; the very things no one else would or could say, these were the things I had to say.

ose devenir qui tu es

Suffering is a form of egoism. I speak only of myself. I am not talking about her, saying what she was, making an overwhelming portrait (like the one Gide made of Madeleine). (Yet: everything is true: the sweetness, the energy, the nobility, the kindness.)

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.

The loveliest creations of men are persistently painful. What would be the description of happiness?

Je pars simplement pour partir, la surprise même est mon but - l'imprevu - Comprennez-vous?

I had forgotten I was alone; I sat there, waiting for nothing, oblivious to the time.

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

They establish distinctions and reserves which I cannot apply to myself, for I exist only as a whole; my only claim is to be natural, and the pleasure I feel in an action, I take as a sign that I ought to do it.

Yet I'm sure there's something more to be read in a man. People dare not -- they dare not turn the page. The laws of mimicry -- I call them the laws of fear. People are afraid to find themselves alone, and don't find themselves at all. I hate this moral agoraphobia -- it's the worst kind of cowardice. You can't create something without being alone. But who's trying to create here? What seems different in yourself: that's the one rare thing you possess, the one thing which gives each of us his worth; and that's just what we try to suppress. We imitate. And we claim to love life.

Long only for what you have.

In order to discover new lands, one must be willing to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.

Throw away my book: you must understand that it represents only one of a thousand attitudes. You must find your own. If someone else could have done something as well as you, don’t do it. If someone else could have said something as well as you, don’t say it—or written something as well as you, don’t write it. Grow fond only of that which you can find nowhere but in yourself, and create out of yourself, impatiently or patiently, ah! that most irreplaceable of beings.

Will it be here that we shall find a place which will not elude us, or which if it remains does not exert on us a culpable attraction? Or must we, leaning over the deck and watching the shores glide by, move forever onward?

Je ne me sens jamais vivre plus intensément que quand je m'échappe à moi-même pour devenir n'importe qui.

No hay problemas, solo soluciones.

El hombre no puede descubrir nuevos océanos a menos que tenga el coraje de perder de vista la costa.

I hated the homes, the families, all the places where man thinks to find rest.

When I was younger, I used to make resolutions which imagined were virtuous. I was less anxious to be what I was, than to become what I wished to be. Now, I am not far from thinking that in irresolution lies the secret of not growing old.

All European writers are ‘slaves of their baptism,’ if I may paraphrase Rimbaud; like it or not, their writing carries baggage from an immense and almost frightening tradition; they accept that tradition or they fight against it, it inhabits them, it is their familiar and their succubus. Why write, if everything has, in a way, already been said? Gide observed sardonically that since nobody listened, everything has to be said again, yet a suspicion of guilt and superfluity leads the European intellectual to the most extreme refinements of his trade and tools, the only way to avoid paths too much traveled. Thus the enthusiasm that greets novelties, the uproar when a writer has succeeded in giving substance to a new slice of the invisible; merely recall symbolism, surrealism, the ‘nouveau roman’: finally something truly new that neither Ronsard, nor Stendahl , nor Proust imagined. For a moment we can put aside our guilt; even the epigones begin too believe they are doing something new. Afterwards, slowly, they begin to feel European again and each writer still has his albatross around his neck.

Most people believe it is only by constraint they can get any good out of themselves, and so they live in a state of psychological distortion. It is his own self that each of them is most afraid of resembling. Each of them sets up a pattern and imitates it; he doesn't even choose the pattern he imitates: he accepts a pattern that has been chosen for him. And yet I verily believe there are other things to be read in man. But people don't dare to - they don't dare to turn the page. Laws of imitation! Laws of fear, I call them. The fear of finding oneself alone - that is what they suffer from - and so they don't find themselves at all. I detest such moral agoraphobia - the most odious cowardice I call it. Why, one always has to be alone to invent anything - but they don't want to invent anything. The part in each of us that we feel is different from other people is just the part that is rare, the part that makes our special value - and that is the very thing people try to suppress. They go on imitating. And yet they think they love life.

No encounter occured that day, and I was glad of it; I took out of my pocket a little Homer I had not opened since leaving Marseilles, reread three lines of the Odyssey, learned them by heart; then, finding sufficient sustenance in their rhythm and reveling in them at leisure, I closed the book and remained, trembling, more alive than I had thought possible, my mind numb with happiness.

To acquire the full consciousness of self is to know oneself so different from others that no longer feels allied with men except by purely animal contacts: nevertheless, among souls of this degree, there is an ideal fraternity based on differences,--while society fraternity is based on resemblances. The full consciousness of self can be called originality of soul, -and all this is said only to point out the group of rare beings to which Andre Gide belongs. The misfortune of these beings, when they express themselves, is that they do it with such odd gestures that men fear to approach them; their life of social contacts must often revolve in the brief circle of ideal fraternities; or, when the mob consents to admit such souls, it is as curiosities or museum objects. Their glory is, finally, to be loved from afar & almost understood, as parchments are seen & read above sealed cases.

I have a horror of rest; possessions encourage one to indulge in it, and there's nothing like security for making one fall asleep; I like life well enough to live it awake, and so, in the very midst of my riches, I maintain the sensation of a state of precariousness, by which means I aggravate, or at any rate intensify, my life. I will not say I like danger, but I like life to be hazardous, and I want it to demand at every moment the whole of my courage, my happiness, my health...