Background Image

...

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.

-Andre Gide

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

The Thing I Am

Andre Gide

...

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.

Views: 5

Topic

More From Andre Gide

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

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

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

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.

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 .

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

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

Whither Should We Aim If Not Towards God?

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

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

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

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.

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

Greatest Victory

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

Faith Can Move Mountains; True: Mountains Of Stupidity.

The Most Gifted Natures Are Perhaps Also The Most Trembling.

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.

The Wise Man Is He Who Constantly Wonders Afresh.

Be Faithful To That Which Exists Within Yourself.

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

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.

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

How Much More Sensuality Invites To Art Than Does Sentimentality.

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

Fear Of Ridicule Begets The Worst Cowardice.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

Prejudices Are The Props Of Civilization.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

Sadness Is Almost Never Anything But A Form Of Fatigue.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Please Do Not Understand Me Too Quickly.

Do Not Scorn Little Victories.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

Sin Is Whatever Obscures The Soul.

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

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

Solitude Is Bearable Only With God.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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?

The Color Of Truth Is Gray.

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.

Profound Optimism Is Always On The Side Of The Tortured.

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

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

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

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

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

Creative Collaboration

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

Often With Good Sentiments We Produce Bad Literature.

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.

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.

Sadness Is A State Of Sin.

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

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.

Long Only For What You Have.

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.”

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

A Work Of Art Is An Exaggeration.

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.

It Is With Noble Sentiments That Bad Literature Gets Written.

The World Will Be Saved By One Or Two People.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

Drunkenness Is Never Anything But A Substitute For Happiness.

Wisdom Comes Not From Reason But From Love.

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

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

Nothing Prevents Happiness Like The Memory Of Happiness.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

Nothing Excellent Can Be Done Without Leisure.

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

Most Quarrels Amplify A Misunderstanding.

The Wise Man Is Astonished By Anything.

Too Chaste A Youth Leads To A Dissolute Old Age.

True Eloquence Forgoes Eloquence.

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

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

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.

One Completely Overcomes Only What One Assimilates.

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

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.

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.

Not Everyone Can Be An Orphan.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

Nothing Blocks Happiness Like Happiness Remembered.

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.

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

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 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.

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

The Nationalist Has A Broad Hatred And A Narrow Love.

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

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

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.

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.

Without Mysticism Man Can Achieve Nothing Great.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

The Great Artist Is One Whom Constraint Exalts, For Whom The Obstacle Is A Springboard.

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

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.

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.

He Who Wants A Rose Must Respect Her Thorn.

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

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.

Art That Submits To Orthodoxy, To Even The Soundest Doctrines, But Lacks Imagination And Deep Self-expression Is Lost Leaving Only The Craftsmanship.

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

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

Understanding Is The Beginning Of Approving.

Trending Author

James Anthony Froude

Category