André Gide Quotes

The priest accepted me, I accepted the priest, so everything went off smoothly.

"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..."

[...] je ne savais rien exprimer du transport nouveau de mon cœur; mais je pressais sa tête contre mon cœur et sur son front mes lèvres par où mon âme s'écoulait.

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

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.

Je voudrais mourir à présent, vite, avant d'avoir compris de nouveau que je suis seule.

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

مجازاتی تو جهنم وجود نداره جز اینکه مجبوری کارای ناتمامتو تموم کنی

Leo demasiado; todo eso fermenta.

If this was happiness, I know that I wanted to hold it like one wants in vain to hold running water in joined hands. But I was already feeling alongside this happiness something other than happiness which was covering my love like the coloring of autumn.

Words are traitors, for language tends to impose more logic than there is logic in life, and that the most precious in us is that which remains unexpressed.

Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does, the better.

He let Julius go. There was beginning to rise in him a feeling of profound disgust — a kind of hatred almost, of himself, of Julius, of everything.

Tout l'effort de l'esprit ne parvient pas à recréer cette émotion de la surprise qui ajoute au charme de l'objet une étrangeté ravissante. Le beauté du monde extérieur reste la même, mais la virginité du regard s'est perdue.

What was doubly disconcerting for me was that he showed such extraordinary and precocious insight in describing his own feelings that I felt he was making my own confession.