Andre Gide

Life never presents us with anything which may not be looked upon as a fresh starting point, no less than as a termination.

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.

Old hands soil, it seems, whatever they caress, but they too have their beauty when they are joined in prayer. Young hands were made for caresses and the sheathing of love. It is a pity to make them join too soon.

Through fear of resembling one another, through horror of having to submit, through uncertainty as well, through skepticism and complexity, there is a multitude of individual little beliefs for the triumph of strange little individuals.

It is the special quality of love not to be able to remain stationary, to be obliged to increase under pain of diminishing.

It is with noble sentiments that bad literature gets written.

I intend to bring you strength, joy, courage, perspicacity, defiance.

Whoever starts out toward the unknown must consent to venture alone.

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

The reasons that drive me to write are many and the most important are the most secret, I think. Perhaps most of all this: to put something out of death's reach.

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.

Understand that the only possession of any value is life.

The capacity to get free is nothing; the capacity to be free is the task.

The sole art that suits me is that which, rising from unrest, tends toward serenity.

Welcome anything that comes to you, but do not long for anything else.

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.

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

It is good to follow one's own bent, so long as it leads upward.

Nothing prevents happiness like the memory of happiness.

The nationalist has a broad hatred and a narrow love.

Are you then unable to recognize unless it has the same sound as yours?