Quotes from Andre Gide

It would be wisest not to worry too much about the sterile periods. They ventilate the subject and instill into it the reality of daily life.

One doesn't discover new lands without consenting to lose sight, for a very long time, of the shore.

'Therefore' is a word the poet must not know.

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

What seems different in yourself; that's the rare thing you possess. The one thing that gives each of us his worth, and that's just what we try to suppress. And we claim to love life.

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.

Oh, would that my mind could let fall its dead ideas, as the tree does its withered leaves!

Wisdom comes not from reason but from love.

It is the special quality of love not to be able to remain stationary, to be obliged to increase under pain of diminishing.

To love the truth is to refuse to let oneself be saddened by it.

The nationalist has a broad hatred and a narrow love.

To what a degree the same past can leave different marks - and especially admit of different interpretations.

Only those things are beautiful which are inspired by madness and written by reason.

The color of truth is gray.

Believe those who seek the truth, doubt those who find it; doubt all, but do not doubt yourself.

The difficulty comes from this, that Christianity (Christian orthodoxy) is exclusive and that belief in its truth excludes belief in any other truth. It does not absorb; it repulses.

The scholar seeks truth, the artist finds.

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

We no longer admit any other truth than that which is expedient; for there is no worse error than the truth that may weaken the arm that is fighting.

Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it.

The color of truth is grey.

To be sure, theory is useful. But without warmth of heart and without love it bruises the very ones it claims to save.

Then you think that one can keep a hopeless love in one's heart for so long as that?...And that life can breathe upon it every day, without extinguishing it?

If only we could lean over the soul we love and see as in a mirror the image we cast!