Top 200 André Gide Quotes (2025 Update)

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

— André Gide

Featured in: Life Quotes, Integrity Quotes, Interesting Quotes, Wisdom Quotes, Being Yourself Quotes

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

— André Gide

Featured in: Change Quotes, Impact Quotes, Inspirational Life Quotes, Quotes About Trying, Graduation Quotes

3. “The color of truth is gray.”

— André Gide

Featured in: Intelligence Quotes

4. “It is one of life’s laws that as soon as one door closes another opens. But the tragedy is we look at the closed door and disregard the open one.”

— André Gide

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

— André Gide

6. “The true hypocrite is the one who ceases to perceive his deception, the one who lies with sincerity.”

— André Gide

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

— André Gide

8. “He who wants a rose must respect her thorn.”

— André Gide

9. “The greatest intelligence is precisely the one that suffers the most from its own limitations.”

— André Gide

Featured in: Intelligence Quotes

10. “In order to discover new lands, one must be willing to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.”

— André Gide

11. “Fear of ridicule begets the worst cowardice.”

— André Gide

12. “It is now, and in this world, that we must live.”

— André Gide

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

— André Gide

14. “Society knows perfectly well how to kill a man and has methods more subtle than death.”

— André Gide

15. “A caterpillar who seeks to know himself would never become a butterfly.”

— André Gide

16. “When everything belongs to everyone, nobody will take care of anything.”

— André Gide

17. “Whoever starts out toward the unknown must consent to venture alone.”

— André Gide

Featured in: Being Single Quotes

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

— André Gide

19. “There are many things that seem impossible only so long as one does not attempt them.”

— André Gide

20. “Be faithful to that which exists nowhere but in yourself- and thus make yourself indispensable.”

— André Gide

21. “The wise man is he who constantly wonders afresh.”

— André Gide

22. “Not everyone can be an orphan.”

— André Gide

23. “Please do not understand me too quickly.”

— André Gide

24. “The want of logic annoys. Too much logic bores. Life eludes logic, and everything that logic alone constructs remains artificial and forced.”

— André Gide

25. “Sadness is almost never anything but a form of fatigue.”

— André Gide

26. “Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it.”

— André Gide

27. “Solitude is bearable only with God.”

— André Gide

28. “I advise the young to tell themselves constantly that most often it is up to them alone.”

— André Gide

29. “Each of us really understands in others only those feelings he is capable of producing himself.”

— André Gide

30. “I intend to bring you strength, joy, courage, perspicacity, defiance.”

— André Gide

31. “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.”

— André Gide

32. “Often the best in us springs from the worst in us.”

— André Gide

33. “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.”

— André Gide

34. “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.”

— André Gide

Featured in: Reading Quotes

35. “Seize from every moment its unique novelty, and do not prepare your joys.”

— André Gide

36. “The novelist does not long to see the lion eat grass. He realizes that one and the same God created the wolf and the lamb, then smiled, “seeing that his work was good.””

— André Gide

37. “I wished for nothing beyond her smile, and to walk with her thus, hand in hand, along a sun warmed, flower bordered path.”

— André Gide

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

— André Gide

Featured in: Respect Quotes

39. “True intelligence very readily conceives of an intelligence superior to its own; and this is why truly intelligent men are modest.”

— André Gide

40. “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.”

— André Gide

41. “It is with fine sentiments that bad literature is made. Descend to the bottom of the well if you wish to see the stars.”

— André Gide

42. “The only real education comes from what goes counter to you.”

— André Gide

43. “To know how to free oneself is nothing; the arduous thing is to know what to do with one’s freedom.”

— André Gide

44. “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.”

— André Gide

45. “Oh, would that my mind could let fall its dead ideas, as the tree does its withered leaves! And without too many regrets, if possible! Those from which the sap has withdrawn. But, good Lord, what beautiful colors!”

— André Gide

46. “The pettiness of a mind can be measured by the pettiness of its adoration or its blasphemy.”

— André Gide

47. “Money cannot buy happiness, but it can make you awfully comfortable while you’re being miserable. Nothing prevents happiness like the memory of happiness.”

— André Gide

48. “It is with noble sentiments that bad literature gets written.”

— André Gide

49. “Do not do what someone else could do as well as you. Do not say, do not write what someone else could say, could write as well as you. Care for nothing in yourself but what you feel exists nowhere else. And, out of yourself create, impatiently or patiently, the most irreplaceable of beings.”

— André Gide

50. “There is a law in life: When one door closes to us another one opens.”

— André Gide