Life never presents us with anything which may not be looked upon as a fresh starting point, no less than as a termination.
Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does the better.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The essence of art emerges when the artist allows divine inspiration to flow through them, with minimal personal interference.
Andre Gide's quote emphasizes the idea that true artistry involves a harmonious collaboration with a higher power, suggesting that when artists step back and allow inspiration to guide their work, the outcome is often more profound and authentic. It implies that the best art is not solely a product of the artist's effort, but rather the result of a divine influence that the artist effectively channels.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about creativity at an art exhibition, one might say, 'As Gide once expressed, art is a collaboration between God and the artist.'
More from Andre Gide
All quotes βDo 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.
Similar quotes
The whole Mediterranean, the sculpture, the palm, the gold beads, the bearded heroes, the wine, the ideas, the ships, the moonlight, the winged gorgons, the bronze men, the philosophers - all of it seems to rise in the sour, pungent taste of these black olives between the teeth. A taste older than meat, older than wine. A taste as old as cold water.
Though everything else may appear shallow and repulsive, even the smallest task in music is so absorbing, and carries us so far away from town, country, earth, and all worldly things, that it is truly a blessed gift of God.
The charge frequently leveled against poetry - that it is difficult, obscure, hermetic and whatnot - indicates not the state of poetry but, frankly, the rung of the evolutionary ladder on which society is stuck.
The writer is always tricking the reader into listening to their dream.
I'm very glad people love 'Breaking Bad,' but the harder character to write is the good character that's as interesting and as engaging as the bad guy.
Painting picture by picture, I followed the impressions my eye took in at heightened moments. I painted only memories, adding nothing, no details that I did not see. Hence the simplicity of the paintings, their emptiness.