Quotes from Andre Gide

Families, I hate you! Shut-in homes, closed doors, jealous possessors of happiness

A desire for truth is by no means a need for certitude and it would be unwise to confuse one with the other.

Actions whose motives he cannot understand that is, actions not prompted by the hope of profit.

If one could recover the uncompromising spirit of one's youth, one's greatest indignation would be for what one has become.

To win ones joy through struggle is better than to yield to melancholy.

The individual never asserts himself more than when he forgets himself.

Nothing is good for everyone, but only relatively to some people.

Art is the collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does the better.

Man's responsibility increases as that of the gods decreases.

What I dislike least in my former self are the moments of prayer.

Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.

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

True kindness presupposes the faculty of imagining as one's own the suffering and joys of others.

"Let the dead bury the dead." There is not a single word of Christ to which the Christian religion has paid less attention.

Great authors are admirable in this respect: in every generation they make for disagreement. Through them we become aware of our differences.

I have no use for knowledge that has not been preceded by a sensation

I do not love men: I love what devours them.

Do not do what someone else could do as well as you. Do not say, do not write what someone else could say, could write as well as you. Care for nothing in yourself but what you feel exists nowhere else. And, out of yourself create, impatiently or patiently, the most irreplaceable of beings.

Please do not understand me too quickly.

Envying another man's happiness is madness; you wouldn't know what to do with it if you had it.

He who wants a rose must respect her thorn.

There are many things that seem impossible only so long as one does not attempt them.

One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.

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