André Gide Quotes

There is a germ of revolt lying in the spirit of inquiry and critical curiosity.

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

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.

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

To win one's joy through struggle is better than to yield to melancholy.

One doesn't discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of shore for a very long time.

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.

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

The world will be saved by one or two people.

I say, "it seemed to me," for from the depths of my past childhood, there now awoke in me the glimmerings of a thousand lost sensations. The fact that I was once more aware of my senses enabled me to give them a half fearful recognition. Yes; my reawakened senses now remembered a whole ancient history of their own— recomposed for themselves a vanished past. They were alive! Alive! They had never ceased to live; they discovered that even during those early studious years they had been living their own latent, cunning life.

I have always thought that great artists were those who dared to confer the right of beauty on things so natural that people say on seeing them, "Why did I never realize before that that was beautiful too?

Be faithful to that which exists within yourself.

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

Long only for what you have.

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.

It is now and in this world that we must live.

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

What I dislike least in my former self are the moments of prayer.