Andre Gide Quotes - Page 10

The most gifted natures are perhaps also the most trembling.

Chastity more rarely follows fear, or a resolution, or a vow, than it is the mere effect of lack of appetite and, sometimes even, of distaste.

The abominable effort to take one’s sins with one to paradise.

So long as we live among men, let us cherish humanity.

Obtain from yourself all that makes complaining useless. No longer implore from others what you yourself can obtain.

An unprejudiced mind is probably the rarest thing in the world; to nonprejudice I attach the greatest value.

Let every emotion be capable becoming an intoxication to you. If what you eat fails to make you drunk, it is because you are not hungry enough.

Never have I been able to settle in life. Always seated askew, as if on the arm of a chair; ready to get up, to leave.

One is always wrong to open a conversation with the devil, for, however he goes about it, he always insists upon having the last word.

Profound optimism is always on the side of the tortured.

To be sure, theory is useful. But without warmth of heart and without love it bruises the very ones it claims to save.

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

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

With each book you write you should lose the admirers you gained with the previous one.

God lies ahead. I convince myself and constantly repeat to myself that: He depends on us. It is through us that God is achieved.

The individual man tries to escape the race. And as soon as he ceases to represent the race, he represents man.

An opinion, though it is original, does not necessarily differ from the accepted opinion; the important thing is that it does not try to conform to it.

Most quarrels amplify a misunderstanding.

What eludes logic is the most precious element in us, and one can draw nothing from a syllogism that the mind has not put there in advance.

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.

The itch is a mean, unconfessable, ridiculous malady; one can pity someone who is suffering ; someone who wants to scratch himself makes one laugh.

Oh, would that my mind could let fall its dead ideas, as the tree does its withered leaves! And without too many regrets, if possible! Those from which the sap has withdrawn. But, good Lord, what beautiful colors!

The artist who is after success lets himself be influenced by the public. Generally such an artist contributes nothing new, for the public acclaims only what it already knows, what it recognizes.

It is essential to persuade the soldier that those he is being urged to massacre are bandits who do not deserve to live; before killing other good, decent fellows like himself, his gun would fall from his hands.

The true return to nature is the definitive return to the elements-death.