Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by Andre Gide (French Novelist)

André Gide (1869–1951,) fully André Paul Guillaume Gide, was a French novelist, writer, and diarist. This winner of the 1947 Nobel Prize in Literature is generally regarded as one of France’s most celebrated novelists.

Born to a middle-class Protestant family in Paris, Gide published his first novel, The Notebooks of André Walter (1891,) at age 22. In 1893 and 1894, Gide journeyed to Northern Africa, where he became very ill and narrowly escaped death. This decisive event led him to question his puritanical upbringing. It formed the basis for a pair of his renowned psychological novels, The Immoralist (1902,) about pleasure-seeking and yearning for new experiences, and Strait is the Gate (1909,) about the complexities of adolescence, love, asceticism, and sacrifice.

Gide published several semi-autobiographical narratives, essays, and memoirs. His works are characterized by the tensions in his life, viz., conflict and compromise between a sense of social moralities and individuality and the need for acceptance despite his controversial personal life and beliefs. In another famous novel, The Counterfeiters (1926,) Gide exposed the hypocrisy of insincere people. He also served as a literary critic and translated William Shakespeare, Walt Whitman, Joseph Conrad, and Rainer Maria Rilke.

More: Wikipedia READ: Works by Andre Gide

One doesn’t discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.
Andre Gide
Topics: Discovery, Action, Doubt, Exploration, Uncertainty, Courage, Risk

Welcome everything that comes to you, but do not long for anything else.
Andre Gide
Topics: Acceptance, Appreciation, Gratitude, Blessings

We live counterfeit lives in order to resemble the idea we first had of ourselves.
Andre Gide
Topics: Being Ourselves

Great authors are admirable in this respect: in every generation they make for disagreement. Through them we become aware of our differences.
Andre Gide
Topics: Authors & Writing

Oh, would that my mind could let fall its dead ideas, as the tree does its withered leaves.
Andre Gide
Topics: Change

God depends on us. It is through us that God is achieved.
Andre Gide
Topics: God

One completely overcomes only what one assimilates.
Andre Gide
Topics: Acceptance

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

It is only in adventure that some people succeed in knowing themselves—in finding themselves.
Andre Gide
Topics: Adventure

The belief that becomes truth to me is that which allows me the best use of my strength, the best means of putting my virtues into action.
Andre Gide

The most gifted natures are perhaps also the most trembling.
Andre Gide
Topics: Talent

“Know thyself” – a maxim as pernicious as it is odious. A person observing himself would arrest his own development. Any caterpillar who tried to “know himself” would never become a butterfly.
Andre Gide
Topics: Knowledge, Self-Discovery

I believe that … all that can, be will be, if man helps.
Andre Gide
Topics: Positive Attitudes, Optimism, Health

Prejudices are the props of civilization.
Andre Gide
Topics: Prejudice

Only those things are beautiful which are inspired by madness and written by reason.
Andre Gide
Topics: Literature, Authors & Writing, Madness

Too chaste a youth leads to a dissolute old age
Andre Gide
Topics: Youth

Nothing is so silly as the expression of a man who is being complimented.
Andre Gide
Topics: Compliments, Praise

Seize from every moment its unique novelty, and do not prepare your joys.
Andre Gide
Topics: Live-now, The Present, Past and Present

Long only for what you have.
Andre Gide
Topics: Blessings, Gratitude, Appreciation

The true hypocrite is the one who ceases to perceive his deception, the one who lies with sincerity.
Andre Gide
Topics: Hypocrisy

It is not always by plugging away at a difficulty and sticking at it that one overcomes it; but, rather, often by working on the one next to it. Certain people and certain things require to be approached at an angle.
Andre Gide
Topics: Perseverance, Ideas

It is good to follow one’s own bent, so long as it leads upward.
Andre Gide
Topics: Purpose

In order to judge properly, one must get away somewhat from what one is judging, after having loved it. This is true of countries, of persons, and of oneself.
Andre Gide
Topics: Self-Discovery

A straight path never leads anywhere except to the objective.
Andre Gide
Topics: Aspirations, Goals, Concentration, Focus

Sadness is a state of sin.
Andre Gide
Topics: Unhappiness, Happiness

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.
Andre Gide
Topics: Prayer

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

February 13, 1951. No! I cannot claim that with the end of this notebook, of the notebook, all will be settled, that all will have been done. Perhaps I will have the desire to add to this again. To add something. To add. Perhaps. To add to this again at the last moment
Andre Gide
Topics: Legacy

What would there be in a story of happiness? Only what prepares it, only what destroys it can be told.
Andre Gide
Topics: Writing

The individual never asserts himself more than when he forgets himself.
Andre Gide

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