Quotes from Andre Gide

Toutes choses sont dites déjà ; mais comme personne n'écoute, il faut toujours recommencer.

Car, je te le dis en vérité, Nathanaël, chaque désir m'a plus enrichi que la possession toujours fausse de l'objet même de mon désir.

Mes sens s'étaient usés jusqu'à la transparence, et quand je descendis au matin vers la ville, l'azur du ciel entra en moi.

The most beautiful things are those that madness prompts and reason writes. Essential to remain between the two, close to madness when you dream and close to reason when you write

Il y a des maladies extravagantes. Qui consistent à vouloir ce que l'on n'a pas.

Martyr, c'est pourir un peu.

I do not want to recollect. I should be afraid of preventing the future and of allowing the past to encroach on me. It is out of the utter forgetfulness of yesterday that I create every new hour's freshness. It is never enough for me to have been happy. I do not believe in dead things and cannot distinguish between being no more and never having been.

Amiel écrirait que son âme émet des rayons noirs.

But I think there comes a point in love, a unique moment which later on the soul seeks in vain to surpass, and that the effort to revive such happiness depletes it; that nothing thwarts happiness so much as the memory of happiness.

She already loved me too much to see me as I was.

One has to choose. The main thing is to know what one wants...

Messieurs, il faut aimer son aigle, l'aimer pour qu'il devienne beau ; car c'est parce qu'il sera beau que vous devez aimer votre aigle...

To read a writer is for me not merely to get an idea of what he says, but to go off with him, and travel in his company.

People don't want to be like themselves. They all choose a model to imitate, or if they don't choose a model themselves, they accept one ready-made.

You have to let other people be right' was his answer to their insults. 'It consoles them for not being anything else.

Il faut de l'esprit pour bien parler, de l'intelligence suffit pour bien écouter.

Ah! que ce qu'on appelle bonheur est chose peu étrangère à l'âme et que les éléments qui semblent le composer du dehors importent peu!

Loving yourself isn't vanity. It's sanity.

If this was happiness, I know that I wanted to hold it like one wants in vain to hold running water in joined hands. But I was already feeling alongside this happiness something other than happiness which was covering my love like the coloring of autumn.

Moi qui d'abord ne trouvais de goût qu'au passé, la subite saveur de l'instant m'a pu griser un jour, pensai-je, mais le futur désenchante l'heure présente, plus encore que le présent ne désenchanta le passé...

To tell the truth, my dear count, I must own that of all nauseating human emanations, literature is one of those which disgust me most. I can see nothing in it but compromise and flattery. And I go so far as to doubt whether it can be anything else.

In a world in which everyone cheats, it's the honest man who passes for a charlatan.

Knowing how to free oneself is nothing; the difficult thing is knowing how to live with that freedom.

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