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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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Man Is Extraordinarily Clever

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.

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Only Fools Don't Contradict Themselves

Drunkenness Is Never Anything But A Substitute For Happiness.

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

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

Sadness Is Almost Never Anything But A Form Of Fatigue.

Sadness Is A State Of Sin.

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.

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

There Are Admirable Potentialities In Every Human Being.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

Often With Good Sentiments We Produce Bad Literature.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

Sin Is Whatever Obscures The Soul.

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

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

To Understand Is Nothing, But To Be Understood-that Is The Problem And The Source Of Anguish. The Soul Throbs And Would Have The Other Know-but Can Not And Feels Isolated. Then Come Gestures, Words, Awkward Explanations And Material Symbols For Imponderable Outbursts Of Feeling-and The Soul Despairs.

Of Some Forty Families I Have Been Able To Observe, I Know Hardly Four In Which The Parents Do Not Act In Such A Way That Nothing Would Be More Desirable For The Child Than To Escape Their Influence.

Understanding Is The Beginning Of Approving.

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

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.

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.

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

Nothing Blocks Happiness Like Happiness Remembered.

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

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

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

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?

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Faith Can Move Mountains; True: Mountains Of Stupidity.

Fear Of Ridicule Begets The Worst Cowardice.

Wisdom Comes Not From Reason But From Love.

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

How Do You Know That The Fruit Is Ripe? Simply Because It Leaves The Branch.

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

One Does Not Discover New Lands Without Consenting To Lose Sight Of The Shore For A Very Long Time.

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.

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.”

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

The Abominable Effort To Take One’s Sins With One To Paradise.

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

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

The Scholar Seeks Truth, The Artist Finds.

Believe Those Who Seek The Truth, Doubt Those Who Find It; Doubt All, But Do Not Doubt Yourself.

I Wished For Nothing Beyond Her Smile, And To Walk With Her Thus, Hand In Hand, Along A Sun Warmed, Flower Bordered Path.

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

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.

Solitude Is Bearable Only With God.

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

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

Creative Collaboration

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.

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

The Wise Man Is Astonished By Anything.

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

It Seems To Me That Had I Not Known Dostoevsky Or Nietzsche Or Freud Or X Or Z, I Should Have Thought Just As I Did, And That I Found In Them Rather An Authorization Than An Awakening. Above All, They Taught Me To Cease Doubting, To Cease Fearing My Thoughts, And To Let Those Thoughts Lead Me To Those Lands That Were Not Uninhabitable Because After All I Found Them Already There .

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Not Everyone Can Be An Orphan.

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.

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

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

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

The World Will Be Saved By One Or Two People.

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

Whither Should We Aim If Not Towards God?

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

Nothing Excellent Can Be Done Without Leisure.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

Each Of Us Really Understands In Others Only Those Feelings He Is Capable Of Producing Himself.

There Is No Feeling So Simple That It Is Not Immediately Complicated And Distorted By Introspection.

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

One Completely Overcomes Only What One Assimilates.

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

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

Nothing Prevents Happiness Like The Memory Of Happiness.

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

Greatest Victory

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

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.

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

To Be Sure, Theory Is Useful. But Without Warmth Of Heart And Without Love It Bruises The Very Ones It Claims To Save.

Understand That The Only Possession Of Any Value Is Life.

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

Please Do Not Understand Me Too Quickly.

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.

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.

Do Not Scorn Little Victories.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

A Straight Path Never Leads Anywhere Except To The Objective.

The Loveliest Creations Of Men Are Persistently Painful. What Would Be The Description Of Happiness? Nothing, Except What Prepares And Then What Destroys It.

Creation Of Man

I Can't Expect Others To Share My Virtues. It's Good Enough For Me If They Share My Vices.

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

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

The Color Of Truth Is Gray.

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!

Too Chaste A Youth Leads To A Dissolute Old Age.

'therefore' Is A Word The Poet Must Not Know.

Most Quarrels Amplify A Misunderstanding.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

When You Have Nothing To Say, Or To Hide, There Is No Need To Be Prudent.

A Work Of Art Is An Exaggeration.

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

Every Perfect Action Is Accompanied By Pleasure. By That You Can Tell What You Ought To Do.

It Is With Noble Sentiments That Bad Literature Gets Written.

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.

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

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

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

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

He Who Wants A Rose Must Respect Her Thorn.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

It Is Often So: The Harder It Is To Hear, The More A Truth Is Worth Saying.

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

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

It Is Only Through Restraint That Man Can Manage Not To Suppress Himself.

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

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

The Work Of Art Is The Exaggeration Of An Idea.

Be Faithful To That Which Exists Within Yourself.

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

The Pettiness Of A Mind Can Be Measured By The Pettiness Of Its Adoration Or Its Blasphemy.

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

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

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

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.

It Is Not Always By Plugging Away At A Difficulty And Sticking To It That One Overcomes It; Often It Is By Working On The One Next To It. Some Things And Some People Have To Be Approached Obliquely, At An Angle.

How Much More Sensuality Invites To Art Than Does Sentimentality.

I Do Not Love Men: I Love What Devours Them.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

Fish Die Belly Upward, And Rise To The Surface. Its Their Way Of Falling.

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

True Intelligence Very Readily Conceives Of An Intelligence Superior To Its Own; And This Is Why Truly Intelligent Men Are Modest.

Long Only For What You Have.

There Is No Work Of Art That Is Without Short Cuts.

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

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.

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