André Gide Quotes
The true hypocrite is the one who ceases to perceive his deception, the one who lies with sincerity.
One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.
I wished for nothing beyond her smile, and to walk with her thus, hand in hand, along a sun warmed, flower bordered path.
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.
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.
We prefer to go deformed and distorted all our lives rather than not resemble the portrait of ourselves which we ourselves have first drawn. It’s absurd. We run the risk of warping what’s best in us
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.
There is a germ of revolt lying in the spirit of inquiry and critical curiosity.
Poverty makes a slave out of men. In order to eat he will accept work that gives no pleasure.
The most important things to say are those which often I did not think necessary for me to say — because they were too obvious.
In a world in which everyone cheats, it's the honest man who passes for a charlatan.
In other people's company I felt I was dull, gloomy, unwelcome, at once bored and boring...
Rather than recount his life as he has lived it, he must live his life as he will recount it.
What would be the description of happines? Nothing, except what prepares and then what destroys it, can be told.
This is my thesis: Do you know what is needful to turn an honest man into a rogue! A change of scene--a moment's forgetfulness suffice.
There's no better cure for the fear of taking after one's father, than not to know who he is.
What would a narrative of happiness be like? All that can be described is what prepares it, and then what destroys it.