Andre Gide Quotes - Page 9

Often with good sentiments we produce bad literature.

The individual person is more interesting than people in general; he and not they is the one whom God created in His image.

The belief that becomes truth for me... is that which allows me the best use of my strength, the best means of putting my virtues into action.

It is with noble sentiments that bad literature gets written.

Great authors are admirable in this respect: in every generation they make for disagreement. Through them we become aware of our differences.

I believe that in every circumstance I have been able to see rather clearly the most advantageous course I could follow, which is very rarely the one I did follow.

Actions whose motives he cannot understand that is, actions not prompted by the hope of profit.

Too chaste an adolescence makes for a dissolute old age. It is doubtless easier to give up something one has known than something one imagines.

The public always prefers to be reassured. There are those whose job this is. There are only too many.

Life never presents us with anything which may not be looked upon as a fresh starting point, no less than as a termination.

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

The miser puts his gold pieces into a coffer; but as soon as the coffer is closed, it is as if it were empty.

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

Every perfect action is accompanied by pleasure. By that you can tell what you ought to do.

If the flower were not attached to its stem, it would flee at the approach of man, like the insect or the bird; for the attribute of man on the earth, at least as long as he does not better understand his role, is to worry and frighten what he is not interested in taming for utilitarian purposes. Man is skillful in mistreating everything he can use

Oh, would that my mind could let fall its dead ideas, as the tree does its withered leaves!

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

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

Families, I hate you! Shut-in homes, closed doors, jealous possessors of happiness

Whither should we aim if not towards God?

The loveliest creations of men are persistently painful. What would be the description of happiness? Nothing, except what prepares and then what destroys it.

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

It is not becoming to lay to virtue the weariness of old age.

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

We no longer admit any other truth than that which is expedient; for there is no worse error than the truth that may weaken the arm that is fighting.