Andre Gide Quotes
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Nothing is so silly as the expression of a man who is being complimented.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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It is unthinkable for a Frenchman to arrive at middle age without having syphilis and the Cross of the Legion of Honor.
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The sole art that suits me is that which, rising from unrest, tends toward serenity.
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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.
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Work and struggle and never accept an evil that you can change.
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God depends on us. It is through us that God is achieved.
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There are very few monsters who warrant the fear we have of them.
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Complete possession is proved only by giving. All you are unable to give possesses you.
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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.
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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.
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Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.
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The color of truth is gray.
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Nothing prevents happiness like the memory of happiness.
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Be faithful to that which exists within yourself.
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Art is the collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does the better.
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It is good to follow one's own bent, so long as it leads upward.
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Fish die belly upward, and rise to the surface. Its their way of falling.