Quote

If the flower were not attached to its stem, it would flee at the approach of man, like the insect or the bird for the attribute of man on the earth, at least as long as he does not better understand his role, is to worry and frighten what he is not interested in taming for utilitarian purposes. Man is skillful in mistreating everything he can use

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
Like
Use
Flower
Insects
Taming
Doe
Interested
Stem
Utilitarian
Earth
Approach
Attached
Insect
Better
Roles
Purposes
Frighten
Everything
Worry
Attributes
Flee
Long
Least
Environmental
Skillful
Would
Purpose
Bird
Stewardship
Men
Understand
Role
Attribute

More quotes by Andre Gide

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Work and struggle and never accept an evil that you can change.
Andre Gide
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Obsessions of the Orient, of the desert, of its ardor and its emptiness, of the shadows of palm gardens, of the garments white and wide - obsessions where the senses go berserk, where nerves are exasperated, and which made me, at the onset of each night, believe sleep impossible.
Andre Gide
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A desire for truth is by no means a need for certitude and it would be unwise to confuse one with the other.
Andre Gide
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If only we could lean over the soul we love and see as in a mirror the image we cast!
Andre Gide
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Society knows perfectly well how to kill a man and has methods more subtle than death
Andre Gide
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But can one still make resolutions when one is over forty? I live according to twenty-year-old habits.
Andre Gide
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I find just as much profit in cultivating my hates as my loves.
Andre Gide
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The most beaten paths are certainly the surest, but do not hope to start much game on them.
Andre Gide
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There are very few monsters who warrant the fear we have of them.
Andre Gide
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The wise man is astonished by anything.
Andre Gide
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The capacity to get free is nothing the capacity to be free is the task.
Andre Gide
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Man is extraordinarily clever in preventing himself from being happy it would seem that the less able he is to endure misfortune the more apt he is to attach himself to it.
Andre Gide
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It would be wisest not to worry too much about the sterile periods. They ventilate the subject and instill into it the reality of daily life.
Andre Gide
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Whoever starts out toward the unknown must consent to venture alone.
Andre Gide
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Great minds tend toward banality. It is the noblest effort of individualism. But it implies a sort of modesty, which is so rare that it is scarcely found except in the greatest, or in beggars.
Andre Gide
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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.”
Andre Gide
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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.
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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Most often people seek in life occasions for persisting in their opinions rather than for educating themselves.
Andre Gide
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Woe to these people who have no appetite for the very dish that their age serves up.
Andre Gide