Top 30 Andre Gide Quotes

Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does the better.

Art is the collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does the better.

It is easier to lead men to combat, stirring up their passion, than to restrain them and direct them toward the patient labors of peace.

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.

The sole art that suits me is that which, rising from unrest, tends toward serenity.

In hell there is no other punishment than to begin over and over again the tasks left unfinished in your lifetime.

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

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

Art begins with resistance – at the point where resistance is overcome. No human masterpiece has ever been created without great labor.

Through loyalty to the past, our mind refuses to realize that tomorrow‘s joy is possible only if today‘s makes way for it; that each wave owes the beauty of its line only to the withdrawal of the preceding one.

Great authors are admirable in this respect: in every generation they make for disagreement. Through them we become aware of our differences.

It is unthinkable for a Frenchman to arrive at middle age without having syphilis and the Cross of the Legion of Honor.

Know thyself. A maxim as pernicious as it is ugly. Whoever studies himself arrest his own development. A caterpillar who seeks to know himself would never become a butterfly.

No theory is good unless it permits, not rest, but the greatest work. No theory is good except on condition that one use it to go on beyond.

It is good to follow one’s own bent, so long as it leads upward.

It is not always by plugging away at a difficulty and sticking to it that one overcomes it; often it is by working on the one next to it. Some things and some people have to be approached obliquely, at an angle.

There is no prejudice that the work of art does not finally overcome.

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

‘Therefore‘ is a word the poet must not know.

Fish die belly upward, and rise to the surface. Its their way of falling.

Most quarrels amplify a misunderstanding.

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

Nothing prevents happiness like the memory of happiness.

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

Nothing is so silly as the expression of a man who is being complimented.

Sin is whatever obscures the soul.

The most decisive actions of life are most often unconsidered actions.

It is only in adventure that some people succeed in knowing themselves – in finding themselves.

I owe much to my friends; but, all things considered, it strikes me that I owe even more to my enemies. The real person springs life under a sting even better than under a caress.

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