André Gide Quotes

[...] 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.

Bărbatul nu-i decât un copil care a îmbătrânit.

الموت يقارب بين ما فرّقته الحياة.

Disease had taken hold of Marceline, never again to leave her; it had marked her, stained her. Henceforth she was a thing that had been spoiled.

Because it was natural, could he not see that it was marvelous? Poor creature!

Счастье не продается готовым, а только по мерке. Я уезжаю завтра; я знаю: я старался выкроить это счастье по своему росту… сохраняйте мирное счастье домашнего очага.

Perhaps this need to lie cost me something at first: but I soon realized that what are supposedly the worst things (lying, to mention only one) are hard to do only when you have never done them; but that each of them becomes, and so quickly! easy, pleasant, sweet in the repetition, and soon a second nature. Thus, as in each instance when an initial disgust is overcome, I ended by enjoying the dissimulation itself, savoring it as I savored the functioning of my unsuspected faculties. And I advanced every day into a richer, fuller life, toward a more delicious happiness.

Aren’t you strong enough to walk alone? We must each of us find God by ourselves.

I was still filled as before with an evil curiosity. There was a mystery about the existence of each one of them. I always felt that a part of their lives was concealed. What did they do when I was not there? I refused to believe that they had not better ways of amusing themselves. And I credited each of them with a secret which I pertinaciously tried to discover.

I hoped at first to find a rather more direct comprehension of life in one or two novelists and poets; but if they really had such a comprehension, it must be confessed they did not show it; most of them, I thought, did not really live - contented themselves with appearing to live, and were on the verge of considering life merely as a vexatious hindrance to writing.

من ينطلق نحو المجهول عليه الرضا بالمغامرة وحيدا.

Sin is whatever obscures the soul.

إنني اترك الماضي خلفي بعيدا كأنه عصفور يطير ويترك ظله.

The deeper the soul plunges into religious religious devotion, the more it loses all sense of reality, all need, all desire, all love for reality.

Le style des Faux-Monnayeurs ne doit présenter aucun intérêt de surface, aucune saillie. Tout doit être dit de la manière la plus plate, celle qui fera dire à certains jongleurs : que trouvez-vous à admirer là-dedans ?