Top 10 Andre Gide Quotes (Best)
Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.
— Andre Gide
It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for something you are not.
— Andre Gide
One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.
— Andre Gide
Everything has been said before, but since nobody listens we have to keep going back and beginning all over again.
— Andre Gide
Be faithful to that which exists within yourself.
— Andre Gide
Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it.
— Andre Gide
Art begins with resistance – at the point where resistance is overcome. No human masterpiece has ever been created without great labor.
— Andre Gide
Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does the better.
— Andre Gide
The color of truth is gray.
— Andre Gide
It is only in adventure that some people succeed in knowing themselves – in finding themselves.
— Andre Gide
68 Best Andre Gide Quotes
He who wants a rose must respect her thorn.
— Andre Gide
Envying another man’s happiness is madness; you wouldn’t know what to do with it if you had it.
— Andre Gide
The funny thing about love is that it must continually grow or it will diminish.
— Andre Gide
Complete possession is proved only by giving. All you are unable to give possesses you.
— Andre Gide
There is a law in life: when one door closes to us another one opens.
— Andre Gide
Too chaste a youth leads to a dissolute old age.
— Andre Gide
To know how to free oneself is nothing; the arduous thing is to know what to do with one’s freedom.
— Andre Gide
Dare to be yourself.
— Andre Gide
A man thinks he owns things, and it is he who is owned.
— Andre Gide
The most decisive actions of our life – I mean those that are most likely to decide the whole course of our future – are, more often than not, unconsidered.
— Andre Gide
Prejudices are the props of civilization.
— Andre Gide
The most gifted natures are perhaps also the most trembling.
— Andre Gide
L’acte gratuite. The unmotivated action.
— Andre Gide
It is easier to lead men to combat, stirring up their passion, than to restrain them and direct them toward the patient labors of peace.
— Andre Gide
Nothing prevents happiness like the memory of happiness.
— Andre Gide
Everything has been said before, but since nobody listens we have to keep going back and begin all over again.
— Andre Gide
A straight path never leads anywhere except to the objective.
— Andre Gide
Society knows perfectly well how to kill a man and has methods more subtle than death.
— Andre Gide
Welcome anything that comes to you, but do not long for anything else.
— Andre Gide
‘Therefore’ is a word the poet must not know.
— Andre Gide
There is no prejudice that the work of art does not finally overcome.
— Andre Gide
One should want only one thing and want it constantly. Then one is sure of getting it. But I desire everything, and consequently get nothing.
— Andre Gide
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.
— Andre Gide
Seize from every moment its unique novelty and do not prepare your joys.
— Andre Gide
Sin is whatever obscures the soul.
— Andre Gide
Nothing is so silly as the expression of a man who is being complimented.
— Andre Gide
The true hypocrite is the one who ceases to perceive his deception, the one who lies with sincerity.
— Andre Gide
There are very few monsters who warrant the fear we have of them.
— Andre Gide
I owe much to my friends; but, all things considered, it strikes me that I owe even more to my enemies. The real person springs life under a sting even better than under a caress.
— Andre Gide
The most important things to say are those which often I did not think necessary for me to say – because they were too obvious.
— Andre Gide
Know thyself! A maxim as pernicious as it is ugly.
— Andre Gide
Whoever observes himself arrests his own development. A caterpillar who wanted to know itself well would never become a butterfly.
— Andre Gide
The most beautiful things are those that madness prompts and reason writes.
— Andre Gide
What would there be in a story of happiness? Only what prepares it, only what destroys it can be told.
— Andre Gide
It is good to follow one’s own bent, so long as it leads upward.
— Andre Gide
Be faithful to that which exists nowhere but in yourself-and thus make yourself indispensable.
— Andre Gide
Only fools don’t contradict themselves.
— Andre Gide
To what a degree the same past can leave different marks – and especially admit of different interpretations.
— Andre Gide
Man is more interesting than men. God made him and not them in his image. Each one is more precious than all.
— Andre Gide
It is not always by plugging away at a difficulty and sticking to it that one overcomes it; often it is by working on the one next to it. Some things and some people have to be approached obliquely, at an angle.
— Andre Gide
What thwarts us and demands of us the greatest effort is also what can teach us most.
— Andre Gide
The want of logic annoys. Too much logic bores. Life eludes logic, and everything that logic alone constructs remains artificial and forced.
— Andre Gide
It is now, and in this world, that we must live.
— Andre Gide
God depends on us. It is through us that God is achieved.
— Andre Gide
To read a writer is for me not merely to get an idea of what he says, but to go off with him and travel in his company.
— Andre Gide
Christianity, above all, consoles; but there are naturally happy souls who do not need consolation.
— Andre Gide
Through loyalty to the past, our mind refuses to realize that tomorrow’s joy is possible only if today’s makes way for it; that each wave owes the beauty of its line only to the withdrawal of the preceding one.
Fear of ridicule begets the worst cowardice.
— Andre Gide
Every instant of our lives is essentially irreplaceable – you must know this in order to concentrate on life.
— Andre Gide
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.
— Andre Gide
Work and struggle and never accept an evil that you can change.
— Andre Gide
The scholar seeks truth, the artist finds.
— Andre Gide
Great authors are admirable in this respect – in every generation they make for disagreement. Through them we become aware of our differences.
— Andre Gide
Most quarrels amplify a misunderstanding.
— Andre Gide
Nothing is more fatal to happiness than the remembrance of happiness.
— Andre Gide
Because it was natural, could he not see that it was marvellous?
— Andre Gide
Understand that the only possession of any value is life.
— Andre Gide
But can one still make resolutions when one is over forty? I live according to twenty-year-old habits.
— Andre Gide
Are you then unable to recognize unless it has the same sound as yours?
— Andre Gide
The wise man is astonished by anything.
— Andre Gide
It is with noble sentiments that bad literature gets written.
— Andre Gide
Whoever starts out toward the unknown must consent to venture alone.
— Andre Gide
The individual never asserts himself more than when he forgets himself.
— Andre Gide
We should enjoy this summer, flower by flower, as if it were to be the last one we’ll see.
— Andre Gide
A dry is useful during conscious, intentional, and painful spiritual evolutions.
— Andre Gide
Sadness is almost never anything but a form of fatigue.
— Andre Gide
The capacity to get free is nothing; the capacity to be free is the task.
— Andre Gide
When you have nothing to say or to hide, there is no need to be prudent.
— Andre Gide
The sole art that suits me is that which, rising from unrest, tends toward serenity.
— Andre Gide
