"The great artist is one whom constraint exalts, for whom the obstacle is a springboard."
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Quote collection
Andre Gide quotes (page 8 of 13)
252 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"Whither should we aim if not towards God?"
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"If the flower were not attached to its stem, it would flee at the approach of man, like the insect or the bird; for the attribute of man on the earth, at least as long as he does not better understand his role, is to worry and frighten what he is not interested in taming for utilitarian purposes. Man is skillful in mistreating everything he can use"
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"It seems to me that had I not known Dostoevsky or Nietzsche or Freud or X or Z, I should have thought just as I did, and that I found in them rather an authorization than an awakening. Above all, they taught me to cease doubting, to cease fearing my thoughts, and to let those thoughts lead me to those lands that were not uninhabitable because after all I found them already there ."
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"I would like the events never to be told directly by the author, but rather to be introduced (and several times, from various angles) by those among the characters on whom they will have had any effect. I would like those events, in the account they will make of them, to appear slightly distorted; a kind of interest stems, for the reader, from the simple fact that he should need to restore. The story requires his collaboration in order to properly take shape."
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"The miser puts his gold pieces into a coffer; but as soon as the coffer is closed, it is as if it were empty."
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"Too chaste an adolescence makes for a dissolute old age. It is doubtless easier to give up something one has known than something one imagines."
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"From the satisfaction of desire there may arise, accompanying joy and as it were sheltering behind it, something not unlike despair."
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"It is with noble sentiments that bad literature gets written."
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"Often with good sentiments we produce bad literature."
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"I believe that in every circumstance I have been able to see rather clearly the most advantageous course I could follow, which is very rarely the one I did follow."
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"Society knows perfectly well how to kill a man and has methods more subtle than death"
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"The greatest intelligence is precisely the one that suffers the most from its own limitations."
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"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."
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"There is no prejudice that the work of art does not finally overcome."
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"To what a degree the same past can leave different marks - and especially admit of different interpretations."
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"The abominable effort to take one’s sins with one to paradise."
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"Chastity more rarely follows fear, or a resolution, or a vow, than it is the mere effect of lack of appetite and, sometimes even, of distaste."
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"Atheism. There is not a single exalting and emancipating influence that does not in turn become inhibitory."
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"Every perfect action is accompanied by pleasure. By that you can tell what you ought to do."
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