Explore Quotes by Andre Gide

Oh, would that my mind could let fall its dead ideas, as the tree does its withered leaves!

At times is it seems that I am living my life backward, and that at the approach of old age my real youth will begin. My soul was born covered with wrinkles. Wrinkles my ancestors and parents most assiduously put there and that I had the greatest trouble removing.

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

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

Wisdom comes not from reason but from love.

I can't expect others to share my virtues. It's good enough for me if they share my vices.

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

In order to be utterly happy the only thing necessary is to refrain from comparing this moment with other moments in the past, which I often did not fully enjoy because I was comparing them with other moments of the future.

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.

Sadness is almost never anything but a form of fatigue.

He who wants a rose must respect her thorn.

They establish distinctions and reserves which I cannot apply to myself, for I exist only as a whole; my only claim is to be natural, and the pleasure I feel in an action, I take as a sign that I ought to do it.

I prefer granting with a good grace what I know I shan't be able to prevent.

No encounter occured that day, and I was glad of it; I took out of my pocket a little Homer I had not opened since leaving Marseilles, reread three lines of the Odyssey, learned them by heart; then, finding sufficient sustenance in their rhythm and reveling in them at leisure, I closed the book and remained, trembling, more alive than I had thought possible, my mind numb with happiness.

Every instant of our lives is essentially irreplaceable: you must know this in order to concentrate on life.

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

Understand that the only possession of any value is life.

We should enjoy this summer, flower by flower, as if it were to be the last one we’ll see.

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

The most beaten paths are certainly the surest, but do not hope to start much game on them.