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An Experience Teaches Only The Good Observer; But Far From Seeking A Lesson In It, Everyone Looks For An Argument In Experience, And Everyone Interprets The Conclusion In His Own Way.

-Andre Gide

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An Experience Teaches Only

Andre Gide

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An Experience Teaches Only The Good Observer; But Far From Seeking A Lesson In It, Everyone Looks For An Argument In Experience, And Everyone Interprets The Conclusion In His Own Way.

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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.

The Difficulty Comes From This, That Christianity (christian Orthodoxy) Is Exclusive And That Belief In Its Truth Excludes Belief In Any Other Truth. It Does Not Absorb; It Repulses.

Obtain From Yourself All That Makes Complaining Useless. No Longer Implore From Others What You Yourself Can Obtain.

The Important Thing Is Being Capable Of Emotions, But To Experience Only One's Own Would Be A Sorry Limitation.

A Desire For Truth Is By No Means A Need For Certitude And It Would Be Unwise To Confuse One With The Other.

To What A Degree The Same Past Can Leave Different Marks - And Especially Admit Of Different Interpretations.

To Love The Truth Is To Refuse To Let Oneself Be Saddened By It.

I Have No Use For Knowledge That Has Not Been Preceded By A Sensation

Art Is A Collaboration Between God And The Artist, And The Less The Artist Does The Better.

Creative Collaboration

At Times Is It Seems That I Am Living My Life Backward, And That At The Approach Of Old Age My Real Youth Will Begin. My Soul Was Born Covered With Wrinkles. Wrinkles My Ancestors And Parents Most Assiduously Put There And That I Had The Greatest Trouble Removing.

Atheism. There Is Not A Single Exalting And Emancipating Influence That Does Not In Turn Become Inhibitory.

The Nationalist Has A Broad Hatred And A Narrow Love.

It Is Easier To Lead Men To Combat, Stirring Up Their Passion, Than To Restrain Them And Direct Them Toward The Patient Labors Of Peace.

Often With Good Sentiments We Produce Bad Literature.

The Itch Is A Mean, Unconfessable, Ridiculous Malady; One Can Pity Someone Who Is Suffering ; Someone Who Wants To Scratch Himself Makes One Laugh.

One Doesn't Discover New Lands Without Consenting To Lose Sight, For A Very Long Time, Of The Shore.

I Prefer Granting With A Good Grace What I Know I Shan't Be Able To Prevent.

The Very Act Of Sacrifice Magnifies The One Who Sacrifices Himself To The Point Where His Sacrifice Is Much More Costly To Humanity Than Would Have Been The Loss Of Those For Whom He Is Sacrificing Himself. But In His Abnegation Lies The Secret Of His Grandeur.

Whoever Starts Out Toward The Unknown Must Consent To Venture Alone.

The Greatest Intelligence Is Precisely The One That Suffers The Most From Its Own Limitations.

Old Hands Soil, It Seems, Whatever They Caress, But They Too Have Their Beauty When They Are Joined In Prayer. Young Hands Were Made For Caresses And The Sheathing Of Love. It Is A Pity To Make Them Join Too Soon.

Nothing Is More Fatal To Happiness Than The Remembrance Of Happiness.

The Artist Who Is After Success Lets Himself Be Influenced By The Public. Generally Such An Artist Contributes Nothing New, For The Public Acclaims Only What It Already Knows, What It Recognizes.

Man's Responsibility Increases As That Of The Gods Decreases.

Through Fear Of Resembling One Another, Through Horror Of Having To Submit, Through Uncertainty As Well, Through Skepticism And Complexity, There Is A Multitude Of Individual Little Beliefs For The Triumph Of Strange Little Individuals.

The True Return To Nature Is The Definitive Return To The Elements-death.

The Most Important Things To Say Are Those Which Often I Did Not Think Necessary For Me To Say - Because They Were Too Obvious.

Mozart's Joy Is Made Of Serenity, And A Phrase Of His Music Is Like A Calm Thought; His Simplicity Is Merely Purity. It Is A Crystalline Thing In Which All The Emotions Play A Role, But As If Already Celestially Transposed. Moderation Consists In Feeling Emotions As The Angels Do.

Understand That The Only Possession Of Any Value Is Life.

Too Chaste A Youth Leads To A Dissolute Old Age.

It Is With Noble Sentiments That Bad Literature Gets Written.

The Most Beaten Paths Are Certainly The Surest, But Do Not Hope To Start Much Game On Them.

Faith Can Move Mountains; True: Mountains Of Stupidity.

"let The Dead Bury The Dead." There Is Not A Single Word Of Christ To Which The Christian Religion Has Paid Less Attention.

So Long As We Live Among Men, Let Us Cherish Humanity.

Our Deeds Attach Themselves To Us Like The Flame To Phosphorus. They Constitute Our Brilliance, To Be Sure, But Only In So Far As They Consume Us.

I Find Just As Much Profit In Cultivating My Hates As My Loves.

It Is Unthinkable For A Frenchman To Arrive At Middle Age Without Having Syphilis And The Cross Of The Legion Of Honor.

Those Who Have Never Been Ill Are Incapable Of Real Sympathy For A Great Many Misfortunes

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.

The Capacity To Get Free Is Nothing; The Capacity To Be Free Is The Task.

If Only We Could Lean Over The Soul We Love And See As In A Mirror The Image We Cast!

Only Those Things Are Beautiful Which Are Inspired By Madness And Written By Reason.

What Seems Different In Yourself; That's The Rare Thing You Possess. The One Thing That Gives Each Of Us His Worth, And That's Just What We Try To Suppress. And We Claim To Love Life.

If One Could Recover The Uncompromising Spirit Of One's Youth, One's Greatest Indignation Would Be For What One Has Become.

Art Begins With Resistance - At The Point Where Resistance Is Overcome. No Human Masterpiece Has Ever Been Created Without Great Labor.

Don't Think That Your Truth Could Be Found By Someone Else.

The Thing I Am Most Aware Of Is My Limits. And This Is Natural; For I Never, Or Almost Never, Occupy The Middle Of My Cage; My Whole Being Surges Toward The Bars.

Oh, Would That My Mind Could Let Fall Its Dead Ideas, As The Tree Does Its Withered Leaves! And Without Too Many Regrets, If Possible! Those From Which The Sap Has Withdrawn. But, Good Lord, What Beautiful Colors!

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.

Be Faithful To That Which Exists Within Yourself.

The Wise Man Is He Who Constantly Wonders Afresh.

Nothing Excellent Can Be Done Without Leisure.

The Sole Art That Suits Me Is That Which, Rising From Unrest, Tends Toward Serenity.

A Straight Path Never Leads Anywhere Except To The Objective.

Enduring Fame Is Promised Only To Those Writers Who Can Offer To Successive Generations A Substance Constantly Renewed; For Every Generation Arrives Upon The Scene With Its Own Particular Hunger.

You Have To Let Other People Be Right' Was His Answer To Their Insults. 'it Consoles Them For Not Being Anything Else.

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.

It Is Good To Follow One's Own Bent, So Long As It Leads Upward.

Most Often People Seek In Life Occasions For Persisting In Their Opinions Rather Than For Educating Themselves.

It Is The Special Quality Of Love Not To Be Able To Remain Stationary, To Be Obliged To Increase Under Pain Of Diminishing.

Happy Valentines Day

Complete Possession Is Proved Only By Giving. All You Are Unable To Give Possesses You.

The Public Always Prefers To Be Reassured. There Are Those Whose Job This Is. There Are Only Too Many.

Nothing Prevents Happiness Like The Memory Of Happiness.

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.

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.

Are You Then Unable To Recognize Unless It Has The Same Sound As Yours?

From The Satisfaction Of Desire There May Arise, Accompanying Joy And As It Were Sheltering Behind It, Something Not Unlike Despair.

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.

Welcome Anything That Comes To You, But Do Not Long For Anything Else.

Wisdom Comes Not From Reason But From Love.

The Miser Puts His Gold Pieces Into A Coffer; But As Soon As The Coffer Is Closed, It Is As If It Were Empty.

By The Time A Philospher Answers A Question Weve Usually Forgotten What Was Asked.

Great Authors Are Admirable In This Respect: In Every Generation They Make For Disagreement. Through Them We Become Aware Of Our Differences.

The Individual Never Asserts Himself More Than When He Forgets Himself.

One Completely Overcomes Only What One Assimilates.

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.

Most Often It Happens That One Attributes To Others Only The Feelings Of Which One Is Capable Oneself.

It Is Better To Be Hated For What You Are Than To Be Loved For Something You Are Not.

We No Longer Admit Any Other Truth Than That Which Is Expedient; For There Is No Worse Error Than The Truth That May Weaken The Arm That Is Fighting.

The Individual Man Tries To Escape The Race. And As Soon As He Ceases To Represent The Race, He Represents Man.

It Is Only In Adventure That Some People Succeed In Knowing Themselves - In Finding Themselves.

He Who Makes Great Demands Upon Himself Is Naturally Inclined To Make Great Demands On Others.

A Caterpillar Who Seeks To Know Himself Would Never Become A Butterfly

I Would Like The Events Never To Be Told Directly By The Author, But Rather To Be Introduced (and Several Times, From Various Angles) By Those Among The Characters On Whom They Will Have Had Any Effect. I Would Like Those Events, In The Account They Will Make Of Them, To Appear Slightly Distorted; A Kind Of Interest Stems, For The Reader, From The Simple Fact That He Should Need To Restore. The Story Requires His Collaboration In Order To Properly Take Shape.

The Most Decisive Actions Of Life Are Most Often Unconsidered Actions.

But Can One Still Make Resolutions When One Is Over Forty? I Live According To Twenty-year-old Habits.

It Is Not Becoming To Lay To Virtue The Weariness Of Old Age.

Man Is More Interesting Than Men. God Made Him And Not Them In His Image. Each One Is More Precious Than All.

Do Not Scorn Little Victories.

It Is With Fine Sentiments That Bad Literature Is Made. Descend To The Bottom Of The Well If You Wish To See The Stars.

Understanding Is The Beginning Of Approving.

Life Never Presents Us With Anything Which May Not Be Looked Upon As A Fresh Starting Point, No Less Than As A Termination.

Woe To These People Who Have No Appetite For The Very Dish That Their Age Serves Up.

Without Mysticism Man Can Achieve Nothing Great.

Never Have I Been Able To Settle In Life. Always Seated Askew, As If On The Arm Of A Chair; Ready To Get Up, To Leave.

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.

Though A Revolution May Call Itself "national," It Always Marks The Victory Of A Single Party.

There's A Law In Life: Whenever A Door Closes, A New One Will Open.

Man: The Most Complex Of Beings, And Thus The Most Dependent Of Beings. On All That Made You Up, You Depend.

God Depends On Us. It Is Through Us That God Is Achieved.

I Advise The Young To Tell Themselves Constantly That Most Often It Is Up To Them Alone.

True Eloquence Forgoes Eloquence.

Other People's Appetites Easily Appear Excessive When One Doesn't Share Them.

When Everything Belongs To Everyone, Nobody Will Take Care Of Anything.

In Order To Judge Properly, One Must Get Away Somewhat From What One Is Judging, After Having Loved It. This Is True Of Countries, Of Persons, And Of Oneself.

We Call "happiness" A Certain Set Of Circumstances That Makes Joy Possible. But We Call Joy That State Of Mind And Emotions That Needs Nothing To Feel Happy.

Long Only For What You Have.

There Is A Law In Life: When One Door Closes To Us Another One Opens.

The Scholar Seeks Truth, The Artist Finds.

The Finest Virtues Can Become Deformed With Age. The Precise Mind Becomes Finicky; The Thrifty Man, Miserly; The Cautious Man, Timorous; The Man Of Imagination, Fanciful. Even Perseverance Ends Up In A Sort Of Stupidity. Just As, On The Other Hand, Being Too Willing To Understand Too Many Opinions, Too Diverse Ways Of Seeing, Constancy Is Lost And The Mind Goes Astray In A Restless Fickleness.

One Should Want Only One Thing And Want It Constantly. Then One Is Sure Of Getting It. But I Desire Everything, And Consequently Get Nothing.

Each Thought Becomes An Anxiety In My Brain. I Am Becoming The Ugliest Of All Things: A Busy Man.

If Life Were Organized, There Would Be No Need For Art.

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.

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.

What Another Would Have Done As Well As You, Do Not Do It. What Another Would Have Said As Well As You, Do Not Say It; What Another Would Have Written As Well, Do Not Write It. Be Faithful To That Which Exists Nowhere But In Yourself - And Thus Make Yourself Indispensable.

It Is One Of Life's Laws That As Soon As One Door Closes Another Opens. But The Tragedy Is We Look At The Closed Door And Disregard The Open One.

If A Young Writer Can Refrain From Writing, He Shouldn’t Hesitate To Do So.

Not Everyone Can Be An Orphan.

An Unprejudiced Mind Is Probably The Rarest Thing In The World; To Nonprejudice I Attach The Greatest Value.

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.”

Our Judgements About Things Vary According To The Time Left Us To Live -that We Think Is Left Us To Live.

Work And Struggle And Never Accept An Evil That You Can Change.

Oh, Would That My Mind Could Let Fall Its Dead Ideas, As The Tree Does Its Withered Leaves!

A Work Of Art Is An Exaggeration.

Everything Has Been Said Before, But Since Nobody Listens We Have To Keep Going Back And Beginning All Over Again.

The World Will Be Saved By One Or Two People.

Be Faithful To That Which Exists Nowhere But In Yourself- And Thus Make Yourself Indispensable.

Please Do Not Understand Me Too Quickly.

Prejudices Are The Props Of Civilization.

Sin Is Whatever Obscures The Soul.

The Most Beautiful Things Are Those That Madness Prompts And Reason Writes.

Generally Among Intelligent People Are Found Nothing But Paralytics And Among Men Of Action Nothing But Fools.

I Owe Much To My Friends; But, All Things Considered, It Strikes Me That I Owe Even More To My Enemies. The Real Person Springs Life Under A Sting Even Better Than Under A Caress.

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?

Nothing Is So Silly As The Expression Of A Man Who Is Being Complimented.

There Are Admirable Potentialities In Every Human Being.

Sadness Is A State Of Sin.

The Only Real Education Comes From What Goes Counter To You.

The Only Really Christian Art Is That Which, Like St. Francis, Does Not Fear Being Wedded To Poverty. This Rises Far Above Art-as-ornament.

The Want Of Logic Annoys. Too Much Logic Bores. Life Eludes Logic, And Everything That Logic Alone Constructs Remains Artificial And Forced.

Believe In Your Strength And Your Vision. Learn To Repeat To Yourself, 'it All Depends On Me'.

The Most Gifted Natures Are Perhaps Also The Most Trembling.

The True Hypocrite Is The One Who Ceases To Perceive His Deception, The One Who Lies With Sincerity.

With Each Book You Write You Should Lose The Admirers You Gained With The Previous One.

Only Fools Don't Contradict Themselves

When I Cease To Be Indignant I Will Have Begun My Old Age.

To Know How To Free Oneself Is Nothing; The Arduous Thing Is To Know What To Do With One's Freedom.

The Individual Person Is More Interesting Than People In General; He And Not They Is The One Whom God Created In His Image.

Man's First And Greatest Victory Must Be Won Against The Gods.

Greatest Victory

In Hell There Is No Other Punishment Than To Begin Over And Over Again The Tasks Left Unfinished In Your Lifetime.

God Lies Ahead. I Convince Myself And Constantly Repeat To Myself That: He Depends On Us. It Is Through Us That God Is Achieved.

The Bad Novelist Constructs His Characters; He Directs Them And Makes Them Speak. The True Novelist Listens To Them And Watches Them Act; He Hears Their Voices Even Before He Knows Them.

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.

Pay Attention Only To The Form; Emotion Will Come Spontaneously To Inhabit It. A Perfect Dwelling Always Finds An Inhabitant. The Artist's Business Is To Build The Dwelling; As For The Inhabitant, It Is Up To The Reader To Provide Him.

When Intelligent People Pride Themselves On Not Understanding, It Is Quite Natural They Should Succeed Better Than Fools.

Do Not Think Your Truth Can Be Found By Anyone Else.

An Opinion, Though It Is Original, Does Not Necessarily Differ From The Accepted Opinion; The Important Thing Is That It Does Not Try To Conform To It.

An Experience Teaches Only The Good Observer; But Far From Seeking A Lesson In It, Everyone Looks For An Argument In Experience, And Everyone Interprets The Conclusion In His Own Way.

Families, I Hate You! Shut-in Homes, Closed Doors, Jealous Possessors Of Happiness

Most Quarrels Amplify A Misunderstanding.

There Are Very Few Monsters Who Warrant The Fear We Have Of Them.

It Is Now, And In This World, That We Must Live.

True Kindness Presupposes The Faculty Of Imagining As One's Own The Suffering And Joys Of Others.

I Have Never Produced Anything Good Except By A Long Succession Of Slight Efforts.

Too Chaste An Adolescence Makes For A Dissolute Old Age. It Is Doubtless Easier To Give Up Something One Has Known Than Something One Imagines.

No Theory Is Good Unless It Permits, Not Rest, But The Greatest Work. No Theory Is Good Except On Condition That One Use It To Go On Beyond.

Often The Best In Us Springs From The Worst In Us.

Profound Optimism Is Always On The Side Of The Tortured.

What I Dislike Least In My Former Self Are The Moments Of Prayer.

We Live Counterfeit Lives In Order To Resemble The Idea We First Had Of Ourselves.

In Other People's Company I Felt I Was Dull, Gloomy, Unwelcome, At Once Bored And Boring.

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.

There Is No Prejudice That The Work Of Art Does Not Finally Overcome.

Envying Another Man's Happiness Is Madness; You Wouldn't Know What To Do With It If You Had It.

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.

Actions Whose Motives He Cannot Understand That Is, Actions Not Prompted By The Hope Of Profit.

There Are Many Things That Seem Impossible Only So Long As One Does Not Attempt Them.

Fear Of Ridicule Begets The Worst Cowardice.

One Is Always Wrong To Open A Conversation With The Devil, For, However He Goes About It, He Always Insists Upon Having The Last Word.

It Is Essential To Persuade The Soldier That Those He Is Being Urged To Massacre Are Bandits Who Do Not Deserve To Live; Before Killing Other Good, Decent Fellows Like Himself, His Gun Would Fall From His Hands.

What Would There Be In A Story Of Happiness? Only What Prepares It, Only What Destroys It Can Be Told.

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.

Chastity More Rarely Follows Fear, Or A Resolution, Or A Vow, Than It Is The Mere Effect Of Lack Of Appetite And, Sometimes Even, Of Distaste.

The Most Subtle Art, The Strongest And Deepest Art - Supreme Art - Is The One That Does Not At First Allow Itself To Be Recognized.

Nothing Is Good For Everyone, But Only Relatively To Some People.

Know Thyself. A Maxim As Pernicious As It Is Ugly. Whoever Studies Himself Arrest His Own Development. A Caterpillar Who Seeks To Know Himself Would Never Become A Butterfly.

Laws And Rules Of Conduct Are For The State Of Childhood; Education Is An Emancipation.

Sadness Is Almost Never Anything But A Form Of Fatigue.

I Believe That In Every Circumstance I Have Been Able To See Rather Clearly The Most Advantageous Course I Could Follow, Which Is Very Rarely The One I Did Follow.

The Less Intelligent The White Man Is, The More Stupid He Thinks The Black.

We Should Enjoy This Summer, Flower By Flower, As If It Were To Be The Last One We’ll See.

Society Knows Perfectly Well How To Kill A Man And Has Methods More Subtle Than Death

Humanity Cherishes Its Swaddling Clothes; But It Shall Not Grow Up Unless It Can Free Itself From Them. Turning Down His Mother's Breast Does Not Make The Weaned Child Ungrateful. ... Rise Up Naked, Valiant; Make The Sheaths Crack; Push Aside The Stakes; To Grow Straight You Need No More Than The Thrust Of Your Sap And The Call Of The Sun.

How Much More Sensuality Invites To Art Than Does Sentimentality.

The Truth Is, I Hoped The Cure Would Dislike Me. I Tried To Think Of Disagreeable Things To Say To Him -- I Could Hit On Nothing That Wasn't Charming. It's Wonderful How Hard I Find It Not To Be Fascinating.

What Eludes Logic Is The Most Precious Element In Us, And One Can Draw Nothing From A Syllogism That The Mind Has Not Put There In Advance.

To Win Ones Joy Through Struggle Is Better Than To Yield To Melancholy.

Every Instant Of Our Lives Is Essentially Irreplaceable: You Must Know This In Order To Concentrate On Life.

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