André Gide Quotes

At times it seems to me that I am living my life backwards, and that at the approach of old age my real youth will begin. My soul was born covered with wrinkles—wrinkles my ancestors and parents most assiduously put there and that I had the greatest trouble removing.

The only really Christian art is that which, like St. Francis, does not fear being wedded to poverty. This rises far above art-as-ornament.

There is no feeling so simple that it is not immediately complicated and distorted by introspection.

Often the best in us springs from the worst in us.

True intelligence very readily conceives of an intelligence superior to its own; and this is why truly intelligent men are modest.

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

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.

Pourtant il me semble que, n'eussé-je connu ni Dostoïevski, ni Nietzsche, ni Freud, ni X. ou Z., j'aurais pensé tout de même, et que j'ai trouvé chez eux plutôt une autorisation qu'un éveil. Surtout ils m'ont appris à ne plus douter de moi-même, à ne pas avoir peur de ma pensée et à me laisser mener par elle, puisqu'aussi bien je les y retrouvais.

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

Pay attention only to the form; emotion will come spontaneously to inhabit it. A perfect dwelling always finds an inhabitant. The artist's business is to build the dwelling; as for the inhabitant, it is up to the reader to provide him.

In my present insistence on high standards you will see that there is less self-indulgence than resolve and application. I do not let the Christian monopolize the ideal of perfection. I have my own virtue, which I am constantly cultivating and refining by teaching myself not to tolerate in me or my surroundings anything but the exquisite.

A straight path never leads anywhere except to the objective.

The sole art that suits me is that which, rising from unrest, tends toward serenity.

Old hands soil, it seems, whatever they caress, but they too have their beauty when they are joined in prayer. Young hands were made for caresses and the sheathing of love. It is a pity to make them join too soon.

No theory is good unless it permits, not rest, but the greatest work. No theory is good except on condition that one use it to go on beyond.