André Gide Quotes - Page 2

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

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

God depends on us. It is through us that God is achieved.

Fear of ridicule begets the worst cowardice.

One can always find hands for a work of destruction.

He let Julius go. There was beginning to rise in him a feeling of profound disgust--a kind of hatred almost, of himself, of Julius, of everything.

The color of truth is grey.

It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not.

I have always thought that great artists were those who dared to confer the right of beauty on things so natural that people say on seeing them, "Why did I never realize before that that was beautiful too?

To win one's joy through struggle is better than to yield to melancholy.

There's no better cure for the fear of taking after one's father, than not to know who he is.

Those who complimented me were those who understood me the least.

The most important things to say are those which often I did not think necessary for me to say — because they were too obvious.

Only those things are beautiful which are inspired by madness and written by reason.

Sadness is a state of sin.

But I think there comes a point in love, a unique moment which later on the soul seeks in vain to surpass, and that the effort to revive such happiness depletes it; that nothing thwarts happiness so much as the memory of happiness.

What another would have done as well as you do not do it. What another would have said as well as you do not say it. What another would have written as well do not write it. Be faithful to that which exists nowhere but in yourself- and thus make yourself indispensable.

Seize from every moment its unique novelty and do not prepare your joys.

In a world in which everyone cheats, it's the honest man who passes for a charlatan.