André Gide Quotes

Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But, since no-one was listening, everything must be said again.

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.

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

It seems to me that had I not known Dostoevsky or Nietzsche or Freud or X or Z, I should have thought just as I did, and that I found in them rather an authorization than an awakening. Above all, they taught me to cease doubting, to cease fearing my thoughts, and to let those thoughts lead me to those lands that were not uninhabitable because after all I found them already there.

Familles, je vous hais! foyers clos; portes refermées; possessions jalouses du bonheur.

To tell the truth, my dear count, I must own that of all nauseating human emanations, literature is one of those which disgust me most. I can see nothing in it but compromise and flattery. And I go so far as to doubt whether it can be anything else.

هنر، همکاری میان خدا و انسان است
و در این همکاری زمانی که انسان کمتر دخالت می کند
نتیجه عالی تر است

No encounter occured that day, and I was glad of it; I took out of my pocket a little Homer I had not opened since leaving Marseilles, reread three lines of the Odyssey, learned them by heart; then, finding sufficient sustenance in their rhythm and reveling in them at leisure, I closed the book and remained, trembling, more alive than I had thought possible, my mind numb with happiness.

تقبَّل كل ما تحصل عليه، لكن لا تتطلع إلى المزيد.

J'aurais voulu pleurer, mais je sentais mon cœur plus aride que le désert.

The truth is that as soon as we are no longer obliged to earn our living, we no longer know what to do with our life and recklessly squander it.

"Why," I asked, "since you live your wisdom, why don't you write your memoirs? — or simply," I went on, seeing him smile, "what you remember of your travels?"

"Because I don't want to remember," he answered. "If I did, I might keep the future from happening by letting the past encroach upon it. I create each hour's newness by forgetting yesterday completely. Having been happy is never enough for me. I don't believe in dead things."

[. . .]

"If only our wretched brains could really embalm our memories! But memories don't keep well. The delicate ones wither, the voluptuous ones rot, the most delicious ones are the most dangerous later on. The things you repent were delicious once..."

Ah! que ce qu'on appelle bonheur est chose peu étrangère à l'âme et que les éléments qui semblent le composer du dehors importent peu!

Вы любите нечеловеческое

I hated the homes, the families, all the places where man thinks to find rest.