Andre Gide Quotes - Page 5

To understand is nothing, but to be understood-that is the problem and the source of anguish. The soul throbs and would have the other know-but can not and feels isolated. Then come gestures, words, awkward explanations and material symbols for imponderable outbursts of feeling-and the soul despairs.

Don't think that your truth could be found by someone else.

Great minds tend toward banality. It is the noblest effort of individualism. But it implies a sort of modesty, which is so rare that it is scarcely found except in the greatest, or in beggars.

The finest virtues can become deformed with age. The precise mind becomes finicky; the thrifty man, miserly; the cautious man, timorous; the man of imagination, fanciful. Even perseverance ends up in a sort of stupidity. Just as, on the other hand, being too willing to understand too many opinions, too diverse ways of seeing, constancy is lost and the mind goes astray in a restless fickleness.

The most subtle art, the strongest and deepest art - supreme art - is the one that does not at first allow itself to be recognized.

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

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

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

Society knows perfectly well how to kill a man and has methods more subtle than death

The difficulty comes from this, that Christianity (Christian orthodoxy) is exclusive and that belief in its truth excludes belief in any other truth. It does not absorb; it repulses.

In order to judge properly, one must get away somewhat from what one is judging, after having loved it. This is true of countries, of persons, and of oneself.

Man is extraordinarily clever in preventing himself from being happy; it would seem that the less able he is to endure misfortune the more apt he is to attach himself to it.

It is the special quality of love not to be able to remain stationary, to be obliged to increase under pain of diminishing.

Through fear of resembling one another, through horror of having to submit, through uncertainty as well, through skepticism and complexity, there is a multitude of individual little beliefs for the triumph of strange little individuals.

The world will be saved by one or two people.

Clear and precise ideas are the most dangerous, for one does not dare to change them.

I find just as much profit in cultivating my hates as my loves.

Laws and rules of conduct are for the state of childhood; education is an emancipation.

Mozart's joy is made of serenity, and a phrase of his music is like a calm thought; his simplicity is merely purity. It is a crystalline thing in which all the emotions play a role, but as if already celestially transposed. Moderation consists in feeling emotions as the angels do.

Generally among intelligent people are found nothing but paralytics and among men of action nothing but fools.

Please do not understand me too quickly.

It would be wisest not to worry too much about the sterile periods. They ventilate the subject and instill into it the reality of daily life.

The very act of sacrifice magnifies the one who sacrifices himself to the point where his sacrifice is much more costly to humanity than would have been the loss of those for whom he is sacrificing himself. But in his abnegation lies the secret of his grandeur.

The individual never asserts himself more than when he forgets himself.

The pettiness of a mind can be measured by the pettiness of its adoration or its blasphemy.