Quote

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.

Andre Gide

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Andre Gide
Age: 82 †
Born: 1869
Born: November 22
Died: 1951
Died: December 19
Author
Autobiographer
Diarist
Essayist
Film Producer
Journalist
Novelist
Playwright
Prosaist
Translator
Travel Writer
Writer
Paris
France
André Paul Guillaume Gide
Andre Gide
Andre Paul Guillaume Gide
Feel
Exist
Distinctions
Feels
Ought
Reserves
Pleasure
Establish
Natural
Apply
Action
Distinction
Cannot
Claim
Take
Sign
Whole
Claims

More quotes by Andre Gide

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The individual person is more interesting than people in general he and not they is the one whom God created in His image.
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It is unthinkable for a Frenchman to arrive at middle age without having syphilis and the Cross of the Legion of Honor.
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Most often people seek in life occasions for persisting in their opinions rather than for educating themselves.
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Money cannot buy happiness, but it can make you awfully comfortable while you're being miserable. Nothing prevents happiness like the memory of happiness.
Andre Gide
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The young people who come to me in the hope of hearing me utter a few memorable maxims are quite disappointed. Aphorisms are not my forte, I say nothing but banalities.... I listen to them and they go away delighted.
Andre Gide
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If a young writer can refrain from writing, he shouldn’t hesitate to do so.
Andre Gide
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The anxiety we have for the figure we cut, for our personage, is constantly cropping out. We are showing off and are often more concerned with making a display than with living. Whoever feels observed observes himself.
Andre Gide
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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.
Andre Gide
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In hell there is no other punishment than to begin over and over again the tasks left unfinished in your lifetime.
Andre Gide
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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.
Andre Gide
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It is with fine sentiments that bad literature is made. Descend to the bottom of the well if you wish to see the stars.
Andre Gide
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God depends on us. It is through us that God is achieved.
Andre Gide
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To what a degree the same past can leave different marks - and especially admit of different interpretations.
Andre Gide
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Let every emotion be capable becoming an intoxication to you. If what you eat fails to make you drunk, it is because you are not hungry enough.
Andre Gide
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Christianity, above all, consoles but there are naturally happy souls who do not need consolation. Consequently Christianity begins by making such souls unhappy, for otherwise it would have no power over them.
Andre Gide
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What would there be in a story of happiness? Only what prepares it, only what destroys it can be told.
Andre Gide
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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.
Andre Gide
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There's a law in life: whenever a door closes, a new one will open.
Andre Gide
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To win ones joy through struggle is better than to yield to melancholy.
Andre Gide
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I have no use for knowledge that has not been preceded by a sensation
Andre Gide