Quotes from Andre Gide

Las más bellas obras humanas son obstinadamente dolorosas. ¿Qué sería el relato de la felicidad? Nada. Solo se cuenta lo que la prepara y lo que la destruye.

La qualité des applaudissements importe bien davantage que leur nombre.

It is not that I lack attention or interest....but even though I am extremely sensitive to the outside world, I can never fully believe in its reality...The real world always remains somewhat fantastic for me...I have no feeling of its reality.

Whether they will or no, a link is created between two creatures who experience a common emotion.

One must allow other people to be right,' he used to say when he was insulted, 'it consoles them for not being anything else.' (The Immoralist - pp 91)

You see, the great weakness of the symbolist school is that it brought nothing but an æsthetic with it; all the other great schools brought with them, besides their new styles, a new ethic, new tables, a new way of looking at things, of understanding love, of behaving oneself in life. As for the symbolist, it's perfectly simple; he didn't behave himself at all in life; he didn't attempt to understand it; he denied its existence; he turned his back on it.

Une autre chose que j'ignorais, plus importante encore peut-être, c'est que j'étais d'une santé très délicate.

Era, por primera vez, la conciencia de mi propio valer: lo que me apartaba, me distinguía de los demás, eso importaba; lo que nadie sino yo decía y podía decir, eso era lo que tenía que decir.

I have often noticed with married couples how intolerably irritating the slightest protuberance of character in the one may be to the other, because in the course of life in common it continually rubs up against the same place. And if the rub is reciprocal, married life is nothing but a hell.

These scenes, when one of the parties offers more of his heart than the other wants, are always painful.

The only drama that really interests me and that I should always be willing to depict anew, is the debate of the individual with whatever keeps him from being authentic, with whatever is opposed to his integrity, to his integration. Most often the obstacle is within him. And all the rest is merely accidental.

If, as I say, I did not love my betrothed, at any rate, I had never loved any other woman.

And if I live badly, whilst I'm waiting to decide how to live?

The manners and customs of bugs are peculiar; they wait till the candle is out, and then, as soon as it is dark, sally forth—not at random; they make straight for the neck, the place of their predilection; sometimes they select the wrists; a few rare ones prefer the ankles. It is not exactly known for what reason they inject into the sleeper's skin an exquisitely irritating oily substance, the virulence of which is intensified by the slightest rubbing...

I have often experienced that, in moments as solemn as this, all human emotion is transformed into an almost mystic ecstasy, into a kind of enthusiasm, in which my whole being is magnified, or rather liberated from all selfishness, as though dispossessed of itself and depersonalized.

In irresolution lies the secret of not growing old.

Every judgment bears within it the testimony of our weakness. In my case, the judgments I have to make sometimes about things are as irresolute as the emotions that those things arouse. This explains that boundless uncertainty which upsets my acts when they must be based on a judgment.

I always see, almost simultaneously, the two sides of each idea, and the emotion is always polarized in me.

Ces scènes où l'un offre plus de son cÅ"ur qu'on ne lui demande, sont toujours pénibles

you must blackmail Julius. Come, come, don't make a fuss! Blackmail is a wholesome institution, necessary for the maintenance of morals.

Die Unannehmlichkeiten an einer allzugut vorbereiteten Reise ist, dass das Abenteuer darin nicht genügend Raum hat

There is nothing more tragic for a man who has been expecting to die than a long convalescence.

Truth can be told to all; the idea, in proportion to the strength of each.

It very often suffices to add together a quantity of little facts which, taken separately, are very simple and very natural, to arrive at a sum which is monstrous.