Skip to content
“Man is more interesting than men. God made him and not them in his image. Each one is more precious than all.”
Andre Gide
“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.”
Andre Gide
“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.”
Andre Gide
“God depends on us. It is through us that God is achieved.”
Andre Gide
“Welcome anything that comes to you, but do not long for anything else.”
Andre Gide
“The most important things to say are those which often I did not think necessary for me to say - because they were too obvious.”
Andre Gide
“There are very few monsters who warrant the fear we have of them.”
Andre Gide
“"Therefore" is a word the poet must not know.”
Andre Gide
“What would there be in a story of happiness? Only what prepares it, only what destroys it can be told.”
Andre Gide
“Complete possession is proved only by giving. All you are unable to give possesses you.”
Andre Gide
“It is unthinkable for a Frenchman to arrive at middle age without having syphilis and the Cross of the Legion of Honor.”
Andre Gide
“Sin is whatever obscures the soul.”
Andre Gide
“The most decisive actions of life are most often unconsidered actions.”
Andre Gide
“Work and struggle and never accept an evil that you can change.”
Andre Gide
“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.”
Andre Gide
“In hell there is no other punishment than to begin over and over again the tasks left unfinished in your lifetime.”
Andre Gide
“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.”
Andre Gide
“To what a degree the same past can leave different marks - and especially admit of different interpretations.”
Andre Gide
“Great authors are admirable in this respect: in every generation they make for disagreement. Through them we become aware of our differences.”
Andre Gide
“The most beautiful things are those that madness prompts and reason writes.”
Andre Gide
“The sole art that suits me is that which, rising from unrest, tends toward serenity.”
Andre Gide
“Nothing is so silly as the expression of a man who is being complimented.”
Andre Gide
“Fish die belly upward, and rise to the surface. Its their way of falling.”
Andre Gide
“Not everyone can be an orphan.”
Andre Gide
“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.”
Andre Gide
“The most gifted natures are perhaps also the most trembling.”
Andre Gide
“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.”
Andre Gide
“The color of truth is gray.”
Andre Gide
“A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned how to walk forward.”
Franklin Roosevelt
“In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way.”
Franklin Roosevelt
