Quotes from Andre Gide

Commandements de Dieu, vous avez rendu malade mon âme, / Vous avez entouré de murs les seuls eaux pour me désaltérer.

joy is out there waiting for us, but it always wants to find the bed empty

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 près de la raison quand on écrit.

Tityrus smiled.

my veneration of her grew in inverse proportion to my self-respect

I do not say that he always discovers it for himself; but I do say that when he is following someone else's example, then it is because he wishes to follow it and because that example has fostered his secret inclinations.

Nothing can make a face more impenetrable than the mask of kindliness.

There is a germ of revolt lying in the spirit of inquiry and critical curiosity.

What would a narrative of happiness be like? All that can be described is what prepares it, and then what destroys it.

There are very few monsters who warrant the fear we have of them.

I wished for nothing beyond her smile, and to walk with her thus, hand in hand, along a sun warmed, flower bordered path.

Throw away my book: you must understand that it represents only one of a thousand attitudes. You must find your own. If someone else could have done something as well as you, don't do it. If someone else could have said something as well as you, don't say it—or written something as well as you, don't write it. Grow fond only of that which you can find nowhere but in yourself, and create out of yourself, impatiently or patiently, ah! that most irreplaceable of beings.

I am lost if I attempt to take count of chronology. When I think over the past, I am like a person whose eyes cannot properly measure distances and is liable to think things extremely remote which on examination prove to be quite near.

Je pars simplement pour partir, la surprise même est mon but - l'imprevu - Comprennez-vous?

No hay problemas, solo soluciones.

In order to discover new lands, one must be willing to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.

Complete possession is proved only by giving. All you are unable to give possesses you

The fear of finding oneself alone – that is what they suffer from – and so they don't find themselves at all.

The priest accepted me, I accepted the priest, so everything went off smoothly.

It is only in adventure that some people succeed in knowing themselves - in finding themselves

Familles, je vous hais! foyers clos; portes refermées; possessions jalouses du bonheur.

I am neither sad nor cheerful; the air here fills one with a kind of vague excitement and induces a state as far removed from cheerfulness as it is from sorrow; perhaps it is happiness.

Understand that the only possession of any value is life.

If life were organized, there would be no need for art.