Quotes by Andre Gide

About Andre Gide:

André Paul Guillaume Gide 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.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

There's no better cure for the fear of taking after one's father, than not to know who he is.

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

The want of logic annoys. Too much logic bores. Life eludes logic, and everything that logic alone constructs remains artificial and forced.

Andre Gide

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

Andre Gide

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

Andre Gide

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

Andre Gide

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

Andre Gide

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

Andre Gide

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

Andre Gide

Si le grain de blé qui est tombé en terre ne meurt, il reste seul ; mais, s'il meurt, il porte beaucoup de fruit. Celui qui aime sa vie la perdra, et celui qui hait sa vie dans ce monde la conservera pour la vie éternelle.

Andre Gide

Terre en vacance d'oeuvres d'art. Je méprise ceux qui ne savent reconnaître la beauté que transcrite déjà et toute interprétée. Le peuple arabe a ceci d'admirable que, son art, il le vit, il le chante et le dissipe au jour le jour; il ne le fi...

Andre Gide

I have always thought that great artists were those who dared to confer the right of beauty on things so natural that people say on seeing them, "Why did I never realize before that that was beautiful too?

Andre Gide

No encounter occured that day, and I was glad of it; I took out of my pocket a little Homer I had not opened since leaving Marseilles, reread three lines of the Odyssey, learned them by heart; then, finding sufficient sustenance in their rhythm and r...

Andre Gide

To know how to free oneself is nothing; the arduous thing is to know what to do with one's freedom

Andre Gide

They establish distinctions and reserves which I cannot apply to myself, for I exist only as a whole; my only claim is to be natural, and the pleasure I feel in an action, I take as a sign that I ought to do it.

Andre Gide

What would a narrative of happiness be like? All that can be described is what prepares it, and then what destroys it.

Andre Gide

Poverty makes a slave out of men. In order to eat he will accept work that gives no pleasure.

Andre Gide

Yet I'm sure there's something more to be read in a man. People dare not -- they dare not turn the page. The laws of mimicry -- I call them the laws of fear. People are afraid to find themselves alone, and don't find themselves at all. I hate this mo...

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

We prefer to go deformed and distorted all our lives rather than not resemble the portrait of ourselves which we ourselves have first drawn. It’s absurd. We run the risk of warping what’s best in us

Andre Gide

Author Bio

  • NameAndre Gide
  • DescriptionFrench novelist and essayist
  • AliasesAndré Paul Guillaume Gide
  • BornNovember 22, 1869
  • DiedFebruary 19, 1951
  • CountryFrance
  • ProfessionJournalist; Film Producer; Essayist; Playwright; Novelist; Diarist; Travel Writer; Translator; Autobiographer; Writer
  • WorksThe Immoralist; Strait Is The Gate; La Symphonie Pastorale; The Counterfeiters
  • AwardsNobel Prize In Literature