Top 200 André Gide Quotes (2024 Update)
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101. “Our deeds attach themselves to us like the flame to phosphorus. They constitute our brilliance, to be sure, but only in so far as they consume us.”

— André Gide

102. “True kindness presupposes the faculty of imagining as one’s own the suffering and joys of others.”

— André Gide

103. “I can’t expect others to share my virtues. It’s good enough for me if they share my vices.”

— André Gide

104. “One is always wrong to open a conversation with the devil, for, however he goes about it, he always insists upon having the last word.”

— André Gide

105. “Are you then unable to recognize unless it has the same sound as yours?”

— André Gide

106. “We should enjoy this summer, flower by flower, as if it were to be the last one we’ll see.”

— André Gide

107. “How do you know that the fruit is ripe? Simply because it leaves the branch.”

— André Gide

108. “Nothing is more fatal to happiness than the remembrance of happiness.”

— André Gide

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

— André Gide

110. “To love the truth is to refuse to let oneself be saddened by it.”

— André Gide

111. “Oh, would that my mind could let fall its dead ideas, as the tree does its withered leaves!”

— André Gide

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

— André Gide

113. “Too chaste a youth leads to a dissolute old age.”

— André Gide

114. “Clear and precise ideas are the most dangerous, for one does not dare to change them.”

— André Gide

115. “Every perfect action is accompanied by pleasure. By that you can tell what you ought to do.”

— André Gide

116. “To win ones joy through struggle is better than to yield to melancholy.”

— André Gide

117. “Other people’s appetites easily appear excessive when one doesn’t share them.”

— André Gide

118. “There is no work of art that is without short cuts.”

— André Gide

119. “In order to be utterly happy the only thing necessary is to refrain from comparing this moment with other moments in the past, which I often did not fully enjoy because I was comparing them with other moments of the future.”

— André Gide

120. “In order to judge properly, one must get away somewhat from what one is judging, after having loved it. This is true of countries, of persons, and of oneself.”

— André Gide

121. “Art that submits to orthodoxy, to even the soundest doctrines, but lacks imagination and deep self-expression is lost leaving only the craftsmanship.”

— André Gide

122. “If only we could lean over the soul we love and see as in a mirror the image we cast!”

— André Gide

123. “Understanding is the beginning of approving.”

— André Gide

124. “Wisdom comes not from reason but from love.”

— André Gide

125. “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.”

— André Gide

126. “The nationalist has a broad hatred and a narrow love.”

— André Gide

127. “Only fools don’t contradict themselves.”

— André Gide

128. “The less intelligent the white man is, the more stupid he thinks the black.”

— André Gide

129. “What thwarts us and demands of us the greatest effort is also what can teach us most.”

— André Gide

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

— André Gide

131. “The most beaten paths are certainly the surest, but do not hope to start much game on them.”

— André Gide

132. “Long only for what you have.”

— André Gide

133. “Laws and rules of conduct are for the state of childhood; education is an emancipation.”

— André Gide

134. “An experience teaches only the good observer; but far from seeking a lesson in it, everyone looks for an argument in experience, and everyone interprets the conclusion in his own way.”

— André Gide

135. “Old hands soil, it seems, whatever they caress, but they too have their beauty when they are joined in prayer. Young hands were made for caresses and the sheathing of love. It is a pity to make them join too soon.”

— André Gide

136. “Enduring fame is promised only to those writers who can offer to successive generations a substance constantly renewed; for every generation arrives upon the scene with its own particular hunger.”

— André Gide

137. “Never have I been able to settle in life. Always seated askew, as if on the arm of a chair; ready to get up, to leave.”

— André Gide

138. “I have no use for knowledge that has not been preceded by a sensation.”

— André Gide

139. “The scholar seeks truth, the artist finds.”

— André Gide

140. “When you have nothing to say, or to hide, there is no need to be prudent.”

— André Gide

141. “A desire for truth is by no means a need for certitude and it would be unwise to confuse one with the other.”

— André Gide

142. “How much more sensuality invites to art than does sentimentality.”

— André Gide

143. “There are very few monsters who warrant the fear we have of them.”

— André Gide

144. “Envying another man’s happiness is madness; you wouldn’t know what to do with it if you had it.”

— André Gide

145. “Every instant of our lives is essentially irreplaceable: you must know this in order to concentrate on life.”

— André Gide

146. “From the satisfaction of desire there may arise, accompanying joy and as it were sheltering behind it, something not unlike despair.”

— André Gide

147. “The world will be saved by one or two people.”

— André Gide

148. “Too chaste an adolescence makes for a dissolute old age. It is doubtless easier to give up something one has known than something one imagines.”

— André Gide

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

— André Gide

150. “Of some forty families I have been able to observe, I know hardly four in which the parents do not act in such a way that nothing would be more desirable for the child than to escape their influence.”

— André Gide