Andre Gide Quotes

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

The color of truth is gray.

Seize from every moment its unique novelty and do not prepare your joys.

One completely overcomes only what one assimilates.

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

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

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

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

Nothing is good for everyone but only relatively to some people.

To win one's joy through struggle is better than to yield to melancholy.

If one could recover the uncompromising spirit of one's youth one's greatest indignation would be for what one has become.

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.

Nothing prevents happiness like the memory of happiness.

A straight path never leads anywhere except to the objective.

We live counterfeit lives in order to resemble the idea we first had of ourselves.

The scholar seeks the artist finds.

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

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.

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

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

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

Long only for what you have.

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

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

A work of art is an exaggeration.

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

Welcome everything that comes to you but do not long for anything else.

Man's responsibility increases as that of the gods decreases.

Our judgements about things vary according to the time left us to live -that we think is left us to live.

Sadness is a state of sin.

Sadness is almost never anything but a form of fatigue.

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

It is now and in this world that we must live.

The world will be saved by one or two people.

Oh would that my mind could let fall its dead ideas as the tree does its withered leaves!

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

One doesn't discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of shore for a very long time.