André Gide Quotes

أن تقرأ كاتباً لا يعني مجرد أن تأخذ فكرة عما يقوله، بل أن ترحل معه وتسافر برفقته.

Il faut de l'esprit pour bien parler, de l'intelligence suffit pour bien écouter.

My eyes filled with tears and I wept long and hard, unable, and unwilling, to stop.

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.

Solo las almas muy banales alcanzan fácilmente la expresión sincera de su personalidad. Pues una personalidad nueva solo se expresa sinceramente en una forma nueva. La frase que nos es personal ha de ser tan particularmente difícil de tensar como el arco de Ulises

I gazed at myself, no longer with shame, but with joy. I felt, if not exactly strong, then at least potentially so, harmonious, sensuous, almost beautiful.

No hay problemas, solo soluciones.

O my dearest and most lovable thought, why should I try further to legitimize your birth?

Wild animals passed on their way under the leaves; each track was an arterial road; and when I stooped and looked at the earth close to, I saw, from leaf to leaf and flower to flower, a moving host of insects.

Characters in a novel or a play who act all the way through exactly as one expects them to... This consistency of theirs, which is held up to our admiration, is on the contrary the very thing which makes us recognise that they are artificially composed.

...que toute émotion sache te devenir une ivresse. Si ce que tu manges ne te grise pas, c'est que tu n'avais pas assez faim.

There are many things that seem impossible only so long as one does not attempt them.

"One must allow other people to be right," he used to say when he was insulted, "It consoles them for not being anything else."

Terre en vacance d'oeuvres d'art. Je méprise ceux qui ne savent reconnaître la beauté que transcrite déjà et toute interprétée. Le peuple arabe a ceci d'admirable que, son art, il le vit, il le chante et le dissipe au jour le jour; il ne le fixe point et ne l'embaume en aucune oeuvre. C'est la cause et l'effet de l'absence de grands artistes. J'ai toujours cru les grands artistes ceux qui osent donner droit de beauté à des choses si naturelles qu'elles font dire après à qui les voit : 'Comment n'avais-je pas compris jusqu'alors que cela était aussi beau?...

The loveliest creations of men are persistently painful. What would be the description of happiness?