Andre Gide

“Je suis un être de dialogue ; tout en moi combat et se contredit. Les Mémoires ne sont jamais qu'à demi sincères, si grand que soit le souci de vérité : tout est toujours plus compliqué qu'on ne le dit. Peut-être même approche-t-on de plus près la vérité dans le roman.”

“Que chaque attente, en toi, ne soit même pas un désir, mais simplement une disposition à l'accueil. Attends tout ce qui vient à toi, mais ne désire que ce qui vient à toi. Ne désire que ce que tu as.”

“Que ton désir soit de l'amour, et que ta possession soit amoureuse.”

“Que ta vision soit à chaque instant nouvelle. Le sage est celui qui s'étonne de tout.”

“Il y a des maladies extravagantes.Qui consistent à vouloir ce que l'on n'a pas.”

“L'homme qui se dit heureux et qui pense, celui-là sera appelé vraiment fort.”

“Parce que ma bouche se tait, pensez-vous que mon coeur se repose?”

“L'homme se dégagera peu à peu de ce qui le protégeait naguère; de ce qui désormais l'asservit.”

“Oh! tout ce que nous n'avons point fait et que pourtant nous aurions pu faire...penseront-ils, sur le point de quitter la vie. - Tout ce que nous aurions dû faire et que pourtant nous n'avons point fait! par souci des considérants, par temporisation, par paresse, et pour s'être trop dit: "Bah! nous aurons toujours le temps." Pour n'avoir pas saisi le chaque jour irremplaçable, l'irretrouvable chaque instant. Pour avoir remis à plus tard la décision, l'effort, l'étreinte...L'heure qui passe est bien passée? -Oh! toi qui viendras, penseront-ils, sois plus habile: Saisis l'instant!”

“Terre en vacance d'oeuvres d'art. Je méprise ceux qui ne savent reconnaître la beauté que transcrite déjà et toute interprétée. Le peuple arabe a ceci d'admirable que, son art, il le vit, il le chante et le dissipe au jour le jour; il ne le fixe point et ne l'embaume en aucune oeuvre. C'est la cause et l'effet de l'absence de grands artistes. J'ai toujours cru les grands artistes ceux qui osent donner droit de beauté à des choses si naturelles qu'elles font dire après à qui les voit : 'Comment n'avais-je pas compris jusqu'alors que cela était aussi beau?...”

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

“بين أن يحب المرء وبين أن يظن أنه يحب، وحده الإله بمقدوره أن يميز بين الحالتين .”

“What would a narrative of happiness be like? All that can be described is what prepares it, and then what destroys it.”

“He (Lafcadio) was sitting all alone in a compartment of the train which was carrying him away from Rome, & contemplating–not without satisfaction–his hands in their grey doeskin gloves, as they lay on the rich fawn-colored plaid, which, in spite of the heat, he had spread negligently over his knees. Through the soft woolen material of his traveling-suit he breathed ease and comfort at every pore; his neck was unconfined in its collar which without being low was unstarched, & from beneath which the narrow line of a bronze silk necktie ran, slender as a grass snake, over his pleated shirt. He was at ease in his skin, at ease in his shoes, which were cut out of the same doeskin as his gloves; his foot in its elastic prison could stretch, could bend, could feel itself alive. His beaver hat was pulled down over his eyes & kept out the landscape; he was smoking dried juniper, after the Algerian fashion, in a little clay pipe & letting his thoughts wander at their will …”

“Fish die belly upward, and rise to the surface. It's their way of falling.”

“You can never cross the ocean until you have the courage to lose sight of the shore”

“Please do not understand me too quickly.”

“The priest accepted me, I accepted the priest, so everything went off smoothly.”

“Be faithful to that which exists nowhere but in yourself- and thus make yourself indispensable.”

“No hay problemas, solo soluciones.”

“Fear of ridicule begets the worst cowardice.”

“Know that joy is rarer, more difficult, and more beautiful than sadness. Once you make this all-important discovery, you must embrace joy as a moral obligation.”

“Quel che si possiede in se stessi di diverso, è proprio quel che si possiede di rado, quel che attribuisce a ciascuno il suo valore; ed è proprio quello che si cerca di sopprimere. Si imita. E si pretende di amare la vita.”

“On ne découvre pas de terre nouvelle sans consentir à perdre de vue, d'abord et longtemps, tout rivage.(One doesn't discover new lands without consenting to lose sight, for a very long time, of the shore.)”

“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?”

“We prefer to go deformed and distorted all our lives rather than not resemble the portrait of ourselves which we ourselves have first drawn. It’s absurd. We run the risk of warping what’s best in us”

“One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.”

“Amiel écrirait que son âme émet des rayons noirs.”

“When we ask for advice, we are usually looking for an accomplice”

“Envying another man's happiness is madness; you wouldn't know what to do with it if you had it.”

“Do not do what someone else could do as well as you. Do not say, do not write what someone else could say, could write as well as you. Care for nothing in yourself but what you feel exists nowhere else. And, out of yourself create, impatiently or patiently, the most irreplaceable of beings.”

“I do not love men: I love what devours them.”

“The loveliest creations of men are persistently painful. What would be the description of happiness?”

“You have to let other people be right' was his answer to their insults. 'It consoles them for not being anything else.”

“Il faut de l'esprit pour bien parler, de l'intelligence suffit pour bien écouter.”

“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.”

“The most decisive actions of our life - I mean those that are most likely to decide the whole course of our future - are, more often than not, unconsidered.”

“The color of truth is grey.”

“I am lost if I attempt to take count of chronology. When I think over the past, I am like a person whose eyes cannot properly measure distances and is liable to think things extremely remote which on examination prove to be quite near.”

“Je pars simplement pour partir, la surprise même est mon but - l'imprevu - Comprennez-vous?”

“Que toute émotion sache te devenir une ivresse. Si ce que tu manges ne te grise pas, c'est que tu n'avais pas assez faim.”

“Martyr, c'est pourir un peu.”

“Only fools don't contradict themselves”

“Profound optimism is always on the side of the tortured.”

“Everything's already been said, but since nobody was listening, we have to start again.”

“Nos actes s'attachent a nous comme sa lueur au phosphore. Ils nous consument, il est vrai, mais il nous font notre splendeur.”

“Be faithful to that which exists within yourself.”

“God depends on us. It is through us that God is achieved.”

“Jette mon livre; dis-toi bien que ce n'est là qu'une des mille postures possibles en face de la vie. Cherche la tienne. Ce qu'un autre aurait aussi bien fait que toi, ne le fais pas. Ce qu'un autre aurait aussi bien dit que toi, ne le dis pas, -- aussi bien écrit que toi, ne l'écris pas. Ne t'attache en toi qu'à ce que tu sens qui n'est nulle part ailleurs qu'en toi-même, et crée de toi, impatiemment ou patiemment, ah! le plus irremplaçable des êtres.”

“Mes sens s'étaient usés jusqu'à la transparence, et quand je descendis au matin vers la ville, l'azur du ciel entra en moi.”