Top 15 André Gide Quotes

Be faithful to that which exists nowhere but in yourself- and thus make yourself indispensable.

Wisdom comes not from reason but from love.

Profound optimism is always on the side of the tortured.

What would a narrative of happiness be like? All that can be described is what prepares it, and then what destroys it.

A man thinks he owns things, and it is he who is owned

We should enjoy this summer, flower by flower, as if it were to be the last one we’ll see.

There are very few monsters who warrant the fear we have of them.

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.

Ante ciertos libros, uno se pregunta: ¿quién los leerá? Y ante ciertas personas uno se pregunta: ¿qué leerán? Y al fin, libros y personas se encuentran.

Every instant of our lives is essentially irreplaceable: you must know this in order to concentrate on life.

In other people's company I felt I was dull, gloomy, unwelcome, at once bored and boring...

Nothing is more fatal to happiness than the remembrance of happiness.

Yet I'm sure there's something more to be read in a man. People dare not — they dare not turn the page. The laws of mimicry — I call them the laws of fear. People are afraid to find themselves alone, and don't find themselves at all. I hate this moral agoraphobia — it's the worst kind of cowardice. You can't create something without being alone. But who's trying to create here? What seems different in yourself: that's the one rare thing you possess, the one thing which gives each of us his worth; and that's just what we try to suppress. We imitate. And we claim to love life.

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.

Sadness is almost never anything but a form of fatigue.