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Current counts: Authors: 8,146. Quotations: 38,970
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| Andre Gide
A caterpillar who seeks to know himself would never become a butterfly.A straight path never leads anywhere except to the objective.A work of art is never finished; it's abandoned.Are you then unable to recognize unless it has the same sound as yours?Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does the better. Be faithful to that which exists nowhere but in yourself – and thus make yourself indispensable. Believe those who are seeking the truth; doubt those who find it.Complete possession is proved only by giving. All you are unable to give possesses you.Everything has been said before, but since nobody listens we have to keep going back and beginning all over again. Everything in me calls out to be revised, amended, re-educated.Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But since no one was listening, everything must be said again.Fish die belly upward, and rise to the surface. Its their way of falling.He who makes great demands upon himself is naturally inclined to make great demands upon others.I call 'journalism' everything that wil be less interesting tomorrow than today.I find just as much profit in cultivating my hates as my loves.I heartily scorn that kind of wisdom that is attained only
through cooling off or lassitude.
I owe much to my friends; but, all things considered, it strikes me that I owe even more to my enemies. The real person springs life under a sting even better than under a caress. If a young writer can refrain from writing, he shouldn't hesitate to do so.It is better to be hated for what you are than to be 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.It is essential to persuade the soldier that those he is
being urged to massacre are bandits who do not deserve to
live; before killing other good, decent fellows like
himself, his gun would fall from his hands.
It is good to follow one's own bent, so long as it leads upward.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. It is unthinkable for a Frenchman to arrive at middle age without having syphilis and the Cross of the Legion of Honor. 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.Know thyself! A maxim as pernicious as it is ugly. Whoever observes himself arrests his own development. A caterpillar who wanted to know itself well would never become a butterfly. 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. Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.Man is more interesting than men. God made him and not them in his image. Each one is more precious than all.Man's responsibility increases as that of the gods decreases.Most quarrels amplify a misunderstanding. 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.Not everyone can be an orphan.Nothing is so silly as the expression of a man who is being complimented. Nothing prevents happiness like the memory of happiness.Obtain from yourself all that makes complaining useless. No longer implore from others what you yourself can obtain. 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. One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time. One doesn't discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time. Only those things are beautiful which are inspired by madness and written by reason.Prejudices are the props of civilization.Seize from every moment its unique novelty and do not prepare your joys.Sin is whatever obscures the soul.So long as we live among men, let us cherish humanity. The abominable effort to take one's sins with one to paradise.The color of truth is gray.The empire of climate is the first of all the empires.
The itch is a mean, unconfessable, ridiculous malady; one can pity someone who is suffering ; someone who wants to scratch himself makes one laugh.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 most gifted natures are perhaps also the most trembling.The number of stupidities an intelligent person can say in a
day is not believable. And I should probably say just as many as
others if I were not more often silent.The sole art that suits me is that which, rising from unrest, tends toward serenity.There are admirable potentialities in every human being. Believe in your strength and your youth. Learn to repeat endlessly to yourself, "It all depends on me." There are very few monsters who warrant the fear we have of them.There is no prejudice that the work of art does not finally overcome.Therefore is a word the poet must not know. Those who have never been ill are incapable of real sympathy for a great many misfortune.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. To what a degree the same past can leave different marks - and especially admit of different interpretations.Too chaste a youth leads to a dissolute old age.Welcome anything that comes to you, but do not long for anything else.What would there be in a story of happiness? Only what prepares it, only what destroys it can be told. Whoever starts out toward the unknown must consent to venture alone.Wisdom begins where the fear of God ends.Work and struggle and never accept an evil that you can change. Yes, my dear brother, Michel has spoken to us, as you thought he would. Here is the account he gave us. You asked to hear it and I promised to tell you, but at the point of sending it to you I still hesitate; the more times I reread it, the more terrible it seems. Oh, what will you think of our friend? For that matter, what do I think of him myself. |
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