Andre Gide Immoralist Quotes

Only fools don't contradict themselves ~ Andre Gide

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

Laws and rules of conduct are for the state of childhood; education is an emancipation. ~ Andre Gide

If life were organized, there would be no need for art. ~ Andre Gide

One completely overcomes only what one assimilates. ~ Andre Gide

Mozart's joy is made of serenity, and a phrase of his music is like a calm thought; his simplicity is merely purity. It is a crystalline thing in which all the emotions play a role, but as if already celestially transposed. Moderation consists in feeling emotions as the angels do. ~ Andre Gide

...Gradation; gradation; and then a sudden leap... ~ Andre Gide

Will it be here that we shall find a place which will not elude us, or which if it remains does not exert on us a culpable attraction? Or must we, leaning over the deck and watching the shores glide by, move forever onward? ~ Andre Gide

I gazed at myself, no longer with shame, but with joy. I felt, if not exactly strong, then at least potentially so, harmonious, sensuous, almost beautiful. ~ Andre Gide

I do not love men: I love what devours them. ~ Andre Gide

What would a narrative of happiness be like? All that can be described is what prepares it, and then what destroys it. ~ 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

I say, "it seemed to me," for from the depths of my past childhood, there now awoke in me the glimmerings of a thousand lost sensations. The fact that I was once more aware of my senses enabled me to give them a half fearful recognition. Yes; my reawakened senses now remembered a whole ancient history of their own - recomposed for themselves a vanished past. They were alive! Alive! They had never ceased to live; they discovered that even during those early studious years they had been living their own latent, cunning life. ~ Andre Gide

Sadness is a state of sin. ~ Andre Gide

Do you know the reason why poetry and philosophy are nothing but dead-letter nowadays? It is because they have severed themselves from life. In Greece, ideas went hand-in-hand with life; so that the artist's life was already a poetic realisation, the philosopher's life a putting into action of his philosophy; in this way, as both philosophy and poetry took part in life, instead of remaining unacquainted with each other, philosophy provided food for poetry, and poetry gave expression to philosophy - and the result was admirably persuasive. Nowadays beauty no longer acts; action no longer desires to be beautiful; and wisdom works in a sphere apart. ~ Andre Gide

The work of art is the exaggeration of an idea. ~ Andre Gide

There's a law in life: whenever a door closes, a new one will open. ~ Andre Gide

The wise man is he who constantly wonders afresh. ~ Andre Gide

Yet I'm sure there's something more to be read in a man. People dare not
they dare not turn the page. The laws of mimicry
I call them the laws of fear. People are afraid to find themselves alone, and don't find themselves at all. I hate this moral agoraphobia
it's the worst kind of cowardice. You can't create something without being alone. But who's trying to create here? What seems different in yourself: that's the one rare thing you possess, the one thing which gives each of us his worth; and that's just what we try to suppress. We imitate. And we claim to love life. ~ Andre Gide

God depends on us. It is through us that God is achieved. ~ Andre Gide

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

The important thing is being capable of emotions, but to experience only one's own would be a sorry limitation. ~ Andre Gide

One can always find hands for a work of destruction. ~ Andre Gide

It is better to fail at your own life than to succeed at someone else's. ~ Andre Gide

There is no feeling so simple that it is not immediately complicated and distorted by introspection. ~ Andre Gide

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. ~ Andre Gide

To win ones joy through struggle is better than to yield to melancholy. ~ Andre Gide

Nothing blocks happiness like happiness remembered. ~ Andre Gide

To read a writer is for me not merely to get an idea of what he says, but to go off with him and travel in his company. ~ Andre Gide

The scholar seeks truth, the artist finds. ~ Andre Gide

The very things that separated me and distinguished me from other people were what mattered; the very things no one else would or could say, these were the things I had to say. ~ Andre Gide