Quotes from Andre Gide

I owe much to my friends; but, all things considered, it strikes me that I owe even more to my enemies. The real person springs life under a sting even better than under a caress.

The reasons that drive me to write are many and the most important are the most secret, I think. Perhaps most of all this: to put something out of death's reach.

Laws and rules of conduct are for the state of childhood; education is an emancipation.

The important thing is being capable of emotions, but to experience only one's own would be a sorry limitation.

An experience teaches only the good observer; but far from seeking a lesson in it, everyone looks for an argument in experience, and everyone interprets the conclusion in his own way.

Fear of ridicule begets the worst cowardice.

The only really Christian art is that which, like St. Francis, does not fear being wedded to poverty. This rises far above art-as-ornament.

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.

Long only for what you have.

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

The world will be saved by one or two people.

It is unthinkable for a Frenchman to arrive at middle age without having syphilis and the Cross of the Legion of Honor.

At times is it seems that I am living my life backward, and that at the approach of old age my real youth will begin. My soul was born covered with wrinkles-wrinkles that my ancestors and parents most assiduously put there and that I had the greatest trouble removing.

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

I wished for nothing beyond her smile, and to walk with her thus, hand in hand, along a sun-warmed, flower-bordered path.

The funny thing about love is that it must continually grow or it will diminish.