Andre Gide quotes

Be faithful to that which exists within yourself.
- Andre Gide

It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for something you are not.
- Andre Gide

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

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

A straight path never leads anywhere except to the objective.
- Andre Gide

What thwarts us and demands of us the greatest effort is also what can teach us most.
- Andre Gide

Know that joy is rarer, more difficult, and more beautiful than sadness. Once you make this all-important discovery, you must embrace joy as a moral obligation.
- Andre Gide

What would there be in a story of happiness? Only what prepares it, only what destroys it can be told.
- Andre Gide

Christianity, above all, consoles; but there are naturally happy souls who do not need consolation. Consequently Christianity begins by making such souls unhappy, for otherwise it would have no power over them.
- Andre Gide

Nothing prevents happiness like the memory of happiness.
- Andre Gide

The want of logic annoys. Too much logic bores. Life eludes logic, and everything that logic alone constructs remains artificial and forced.
- Andre Gide

Nothing is more fatal to happiness than the remembrance of happiness.
- Andre Gide

But can one still make resolutions when one is over forty? I live according to twenty-year-old habits.
- Andre Gide

It is with noble sentiments that bad literature gets written.
- Andre Gide

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

Fear of ridicule begets the worst cowardice.
- Andre Gide

It is now, and in this world, that we must live.
- Andre Gide

Only fools don't contradict themselves
- Andre Gide

One should want only one thing and want it constantly. Then one is sure of getting it. But I desire everything, and consequently get nothing.
- Andre Gide

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.
- Andre Gide

The most decisive actions of our life - I mean those that are most likely to decide the whole course of our future - are, more often than not, unconsidered.
- Andre Gide

The most beautiful things are those that madness prompts and reason writes.
- Andre Gide

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

Everything has been said before, but since nobody listens we have to keep going back and beginning all over again.
- Andre Gide