Quotes by André Gide

The most important things to say are those which often I did not think necessary for me to say — because they were too obvious.

Because it was natural, could he not see that it was marvelous? Poor creature!

I say, it seemed to me, for from the depths of my past childhood, there now awoke in me the glimmerings of a thousand lost sensations. The fact that I was once more aware of my senses enabled me to give them a half fearful recognition. Yes; my reawakened senses now remembered a whole ancient history of their own— recomposed for themselves a vanished past. They were alive! Alive! They had never ceased to live; they discovered that even during those early studious years they had been living their own latent, cunning life.

Poverty makes a slave out of men. In order to eat he will accept work that gives no pleasure.

Those who complimented me were those who understood me the least.

There is a germ of revolt lying in the spirit of inquiry and critical curiosity.

He let Julius go. There was beginning to rise in him a feeling of profound disgust--a kind of hatred almost, of himself, of Julius, of everything.

One can always find hands for a work of destruction.

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?

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

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.