Andre Gide

“In order to be utterly happy the only thing necessary is to refrain from comparing this moment with other moments in the past, which I often did not fully enjoy because I was comparing them with other moments of the future.”

“Long only for what you have.”

“Je n'aime pas les hommes; j'aime ce qui les dévore.”

“Messieurs, il faut aimer son aigle, l'aimer pour qu'il devienne beau ; car c'est parce qu'il sera beau que vous devez aimer votre aigle...”

“C'est souvent lorsqu'elle est le plus désagréable à entendre qu'une vérité est le plus utile à dire, et lorsqu'elle risque de rencontrer l'opposition la plus vive. Mais il y a souvent péril à ne point souffler dans le sens du vent.”

“The things one feels are different about oneself are the things that are rare, that give each person their value - and these are the things they try to repress. The imitate and make out they love life!”

“Robert crede că ştie tot despre mine. Nici măcar nu bănuieşte că pot avea o viaţă a mea, independentă de a lui. Mă consideră doar drept o anexă. Îi sunt necesară pentru a se simţi confortabil instalat în existenţă. Sunt soţia lui.”

“Desigur, trebuie să ai o anumită experienţă a vieţii pentru a înţelege că nu poţi nădăjdui să obţii lucrurile pe care le doreşti decît riscîndu-le pe cele la care ţii mai mult.”

“Exist pentru a-l ajuta, nu pentru a-l abate din drumul său.”

“Acum am înţeles cum te poţi distra la recepţiile mondene: observînd cît de ridicoli sunt cei din jur.”

“Bărbatul nu-i decât un copil care a îmbătrânit.”

“Nu ţin cu orice preţ să parvin, mi-a spus cu un zâmbet fermecător, dar ţin ca ideile pentru care lupt să izbîndească.”

“Je ne me sens jamais vivre plus intensément que quand je m'échappe à moi-même pour devenir n'importe qui.”

“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.”

“Sadness is almost never anything but a form of fatigue.”

“We who would seek new land must be willing to sacrifice the sight of shore for a long, long time.”

“He who wants a rose must respect her thorn.”

“If your target as a Muslim artist, writer or speaker is to target only Muslims you need to rethink your plan.”

“Solo las almas muy banales alcanzan fácilmente la expresión sincera de su personalidad. Pues una personalidad nueva solo se expresa sinceramente en una forma nueva. La frase que nos es personal ha de ser tan particularmente difícil de tensar como el arco de Ulises”

“I prefer granting with a good grace what I know I shan't be able to prevent.”

“No encounter occured that day, and I was glad of it; I took out of my pocket a little Homer I had not opened since leaving Marseilles, reread three lines of the Odyssey, learned them by heart; then, finding sufficient sustenance in their rhythm and reveling in them at leisure, I closed the book and remained, trembling, more alive than I had thought possible, my mind numb with happiness.”

“...Gradation; gradation; and then a sudden leap...”

“Every instant of our lives is essentially irreplaceable: you must know this in order to concentrate on life.”

“A man thinks he owns things, and it is he who is owned”

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

“The novelist does not long to see the lion eat grass. He realizes that one and the same God created the wolf and the lamb, then smiled, "seeing that his work was good".”

“C'est dans l'extraordinaire que je me sens le plus naturel.”

“Pour grandir, il faut porter loin de soi ses regards.Et puis ne regarder pas trop en arrière”

“Throw away my book: you must understand that it represents only one of a thousand attitudes. You must find your own. If someone else could have done something as well as you, don’t do it. If someone else could have said something as well as you, don’t say it—or written something as well as you, don’t write it. Grow fond only of that which you can find nowhere but in yourself, and create out of yourself, impatiently or patiently, ah! that most irreplaceable of beings.”

“They establish distinctions and reserves which I cannot apply to myself, for I exist only as a whole; my only claim is to be natural, and the pleasure I feel in an action, I take as a sign that I ought to do it.”

“The capacity to get free is nothing; the capacity to be free is the task.”

“Le style des Faux-Monnayeurs ne doit présenter aucun intérêt de surface, aucune saillie. Tout doit être dit de la manière la plus plate, celle qui fera dire à certains jongleurs : que trouvez-vous à admirer là-dedans ?”

“El hombre no puede descubrir nuevos océanos a menos que tenga el coraje de perder de vista la costa.”

“El color de la verdad es gris.”

“Understand that the only possession of any value is life.”

“The truth is that as soon as we are no longer obliged to earn our living, we no longer know what to do with our life and recklessly squander it.”

“Welcome everything that comes to you, but do not long for anything else.”

“Will it be here that we shall find a place which will not elude us, or which if it remains does not exert on us a culpable attraction? Or must we, leaning over the deck and watching the shores glide by, move forever onward?”

“Moi qui d'abord ne trouvais de goût qu'au passé, la subite saveur de l'instant m'a pu griser un jour, pensai-je, mais le futur désenchante l'heure présente, plus encore que le présent ne désenchanta le passé...”

“Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But since no one was listening, everything must be said again.”

“We should enjoy this summer, flower by flower, as if it were to be the last one we’ll see.”

“The most beaten paths are certainly the surest, but do not hope to start much game on them.”

“Yet I'm sure there's something more to be read in a man. People dare not -- they dare not turn the page. The laws of mimicry -- I call them the laws of fear. People are afraid to find themselves alone, and don't find themselves at all. I hate this moral agoraphobia -- it's the worst kind of cowardice. You can't create something without being alone. But who's trying to create here? What seems different in yourself: that's the one rare thing you possess, the one thing which gives each of us his worth; and that's just what we try to suppress. We imitate. And we claim to love life.”

“Ne désire jamais, Nathanaël, regoûter les eaux du passé...Ne cherche pas, dans l'avenir, à retrouver jamais le passé. Saisis de chaque instant la nouveauté irressemblable et ne prépare pas tes joies, ou sache qu'en son lieu préparé te surprendra une joie autre.”

“Car, je te le dis en vérité, Nathanaël, chaque désir m'a plus enrichi que la possession toujours fausse de l'objet même de mon désir.”

“Dare to be yourself”

“Croyez ceux qui cherchent la vérité, doutez de ceux qui la trouvent.”

“Wild animals passed on their way under the leaves; each track was an arterial road; and when I stooped and looked at the earth close to, I saw, from leaf to leaf and flower to flower, a moving host of insects.”

“There are very few monsters who warrant the fear we have of them.”

“Dès que Séraphine l'a laissé seul, Gontran se jette à genoux au pied du lit ; il enfonce son front dans les draps, mais ne parvient pas à pleurer ; aucun élan ne soulève son cœur. Ses yeux désespérément restent secs. Alors il se relève. Il regarde ce visage impassible. Il voudrait, en ce moment solennel, éprouver je ne sais quoi de sublime et de rare, écouter une communication de l'au-delà, lancer sa pensée dans des régions éthérées,suprasensibles - mais elle reste accrochée, sa pensée, au ras du sol. Il regarde les mains exsangues du mort, et se demande combien de temps encore les ongles continueront de pousser.”