André Paul Guillaume Gide (November 22, 1869 – February 19 1951) was a French author and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1947 "for his comprehensive and artistically significant writings, in which human problems and conditions have been presented with a fearless love of truth and keen psychological insight." Gide's career ranged from its beginnings in the symbolist movement, to the advent of anticolonialism between the two World Wars. (Click here for full Wikipedia article)
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A straight path never leads anywhere except to the objective.
Believe those who seek the truth, doubt those who find it; doubt all, but do not doubt yourself.
Everything has been said before, but since nobody listens we have to keep going back and beginning all over again.
Generally among intelligent people are found nothing but paralytics and among men of action nothing but fools.
It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not.
It is with fine sentiments that bad literature is made. Descend to the bottom of the well if you wish to see the stars.
Let every emotion be capable becoming an intoxication to you. If what you eat fails to make you drunk, it is because you are not hungry enough.
Most often people seek in life occasions for persisting in their opinions rather than for educating themselves.
Often the best in us springs from the worst in us.
One doesn't discover new lands without consenting to lose sight, for a very long time, of the shore.
Pay attention only to the form; emotion will come spontaneously to inhabit it. A perfect dwelling always finds an inhabitant. The artist's business is to build the dwelling; as for the inhabitant, it is up to the reader to provide him.
Sin is whatever obscures the soul.
The most decisive actions of our life- I mean those that are most likely to decide the whole course of our future- are, more often than not, unconsidered.
The true hypocrite is the one who ceases to perceive his deception, the one who lies with sincerity.
The wise man is astonished by anything.
There are many things that seem impossible only so long as one does not attempt them.
There is no feeling so simple that it is not immediately complicated and distorted by introspection.
True intelligence very readily conceives of an intelligence superior to its own; and this is why truly intelligent men are modest.
True kindness presupposes the faculty of imagining as one's own the suffering and joys of others.
We call 'happiness' a certain set of circumstances that makes joy possible. But we call joy that state of mind and emotions that needs nothing to feel happy.
What another would have done as well as you, do not do it. What another would have said as well as you, do not say it; what another would have written as well, do not write it. Be faithful to that which exists nowhere but in yourself- and thus make yourself indispensable.
When intelligent people pride themselves on not understanding, it is quite natural they should succeed better than fools.
Wisdom comes not from reason but from love.
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(November 22 is also the birthday of Abigail Adams, Charles deGaulle, and George Eliot)
Categories: André Gide, Quotes of the day
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