André Gide Quotes

Better to be silent and thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.

...Gradation; gradation; and then a sudden leap...

…the facts of history all appeared to me like specimens in a herbarium, permanently dried, so that it was easy to forget they had once upon a time been juicy with sap and alive in the sun.

The things one feels are different about oneself are the things that are rare, that give each person their value - and these are the things they try to repress. The imitate and make out they love life!

Jette mon livre; dis-toi bien que ce n'est là qu'une des mille postures possibles en face de la vie. Cherche la tienne. Ce qu'un autre aurait aussi bien fait que toi, ne le fais pas. Ce qu'un autre aurait aussi bien dit que toi, ne le dis pas, — aussi bien écrit que toi, ne l'écris pas. Ne t'attache en toi qu'à ce que tu sens qui n'est nulle part ailleurs qu'en toi-même, et crée de toi, impatiemment ou patiemment, ah! le plus irremplaçable des êtres.

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.

Ne désire jamais, Nathanaël, regoûter les eaux du passé...Ne cherche pas, dans l'avenir, à retrouver jamais le passé. Saisis de chaque instant la nouveauté irressemblable et ne prépare pas tes joies, ou sache qu'en son lieu préparé te surprendra une joie autre.

من در جستجوی چیزی بودم که لیاقت مرا داشته باشد و برای این منظور بایستی با سماجت به قهقرا و پستی فرو روم
(رذل)

Do you know why our poetry today and especially our philosophy are such dead issues? Because they've cut themselves off from life. Now, Greece idealized on life's own level: an artist's life was already a poetic achievement; a philosopher's life was an enactment of his philosophy; and when they were a part of life that way, instead of ignoring each other, philosophy could nourish poetry, poetry express philosophy, and together achieve an admirable persuasiveness. Today beauty no longer acts; and action no longer bothers about being beautiful; and wisdom operates on the sidelines.

He (Lafcadio) was sitting all alone in a compartment of the train which was carrying him away from Rome, & contemplating–not without satisfaction–his hands in their grey doeskin gloves, as they lay on the rich fawn-colored plaid, which, in spite of the heat, he had spread negligently over his knees. Through the soft woolen material of his traveling-suit he breathed ease and comfort at every pore; his neck was unconfined in its collar which without being low was unstarched, & from beneath which the narrow line of a bronze silk necktie ran, slender as a grass snake, over his pleated shirt. He was at ease in his skin, at ease in his shoes, which were cut out of the same doeskin as his gloves; his foot in its elastic prison could stretch, could bend, could feel itself alive. His beaver hat was pulled down over his eyes & kept out the landscape; he was smoking dried juniper, after the Algerian fashion, in a little clay pipe & letting his thoughts wander at their will …

Nos actes s'attachent a nous comme sa lueur au phosphore. Ils nous consument, il est vrai, mais il nous font notre splendeur.

Nothing thwarts happiness so much as the memory of happiness.

"Oh," I thought, "without a doubt, everything in my life is falling to pieces. Nothing that my hand grasps can my hand hold."

Que ta vision soit à chaque instant nouvelle. Le sage est celui qui s'étonne de tout.

Les choses les plus belles sont celles que souffle la folie et qu'écrit la raison. Il faut demeurer entre les deux, tout près de la folie quand on rêve, tout prêt de la raison quand on écrit.