Andre Gide (1869 – 1951)
French author and winner of the Nobel Prize in literature in 1947.
There is no feeling so simple that it is not immediately complicated and distorted by introspection.
Man is more interesting than men. God made him and not them in his image. Each one is more precious than all.
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.
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.
True kindness presupposes the faculty of imagining as one’s own the suffering and joys of others.
C'est avec de beaux sentiments qu'on fait de la mauvaise littérature.
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.
The most important things to say are those which often I did not think necessary for me to say — because they were too obvious.
There are many things that seem impossible only so long as one does not attempt them.
Generally among intelligent people are found nothing but paralytics and among men of action nothing but fools.
The artist who is after success lets himself be influenced by the public. Generally such an artist contributes nothing new, for the public acclaims only what it already knows, what it recognizes.
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.
Art begins with resistance — at the point where resistance is overcome. No human masterpiece has ever been created without great labor.
When people felt they had a right to seek out Christ before the torment, and in the fullness of his joy—it was too late; the cross had overcome Christ himself; it was Christ crucified that people continued to see and teach. And thus it is that religion came to plunge the world into gloom.
We call “happiness” a certain set of circumstances that makes joy possible. But we call joy that state of mind and emotions that needs nothing to feel happy.
A straight path never leads anywhere? except to the objective.
On ne découvre pas de terre nouvelle sans consentir ? perdre de vue, d'abord et longtemps, tout rivage.
La sagesse n'est pas dans la raison, mais dans l'amour.
The sole art that suits me is that which, rising from unrest, tends toward serenity.
Le péché, c'est ce qui obscurcit l'âme.