André Gide quotes - page 2

At times is it seems that I am living my life backward, and that at the approach of old age my real youth will begin. My soul was born covered with wrinkles-wrinkles that my ancestors and parents most assiduously put there and that I had the greatest trouble removing. (André Gide)
There are very few monsters who warrant the fear we have of them.
André Gide
It is with noble sentiments that bad literature gets written.
André Gide
God depends on us. It is through us that God is achieved.
André Gide
The color of truth is grey.
André Gide
Welcome anything that comes to you, but do not long for anything else.
André Gide
Families, I hate you Shut-in homes, closed doors, jealous possessors of happiness.
André Gide
The abominable effort to take one's sins with one to paradise.
André Gide
Only fools don't contradict themselves.
André Gide
Pay attention only to the form; emotion will come spontaneously to inhabit it. A perfect dwelling always finds an inhabitant. The artist's business is to build the dwelling; as for the inhabitant, it is up to the reader to provide him.
André Gide
True intelligence very readily conceives of an intelligence superior to its own; and this is why truly intelligent men are modest. (André Gide)
Most often people seek in life occasions for persisting in their opinions rather than for educating themselves.
André Gide
Know thyself. A maxim as pernicious as it is ugly. Whoever studies himself arrest his own development. A caterpillar who seeks to know himself would never become a butterfly.
André Gide
To know how to free oneself is nothing; the arduous thing is to know what to do with one's freedom.
André Gide
Believe those who seek the truth, doubt those who find it; doubt all, but do not doubt yourself.
André Gide
Nothing prevents happiness like the memory of happiness.
André Gide
Often the best in us springs from the worst in us.
André Gide
When intelligent people pride themselves on not understanding, it is quite natural they should succeed better than fools.
André Gide
We call "happiness" a certain set of circumstances that makes joy possible. But we call joy that state of mind and emotions that needs nothing to feel happy.
André Gide
There are many things that seem impossible only so long as one does not attempt them.
André Gide
There is no feeling so simple that it is not immediately complicated and distorted by introspection. (André Gide)
Generally among intelligent people are found nothing but paralytics and among men of action nothing but fools.
André Gide
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.
André Gide
Nothing is more fatal to happiness than the remembrance of happiness.
André Gide
The only really Christian art is that which, like St. Francis, does not fear being wedded to poverty. This rises far above art-as-ornament.
André Gide