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

-Andre Gide

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Though A Revolution May

Andre Gide

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

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

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

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

The Color Of Truth Is Gray.

An Artist Cannot Get Along Without A Public; And When The Public Is Absent, What Does He Do? He Invents It, And Turning His Back On His Age, He Looks Toward The Future For What The Present Denies.

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

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

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.

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

Do Not Scorn Little Victories.

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

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

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.

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

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

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 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.

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.

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

Prejudices Are The Props Of Civilization.

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

Long Only For What You Have.

Nothing Excellent Can Be Done Without Leisure.

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

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

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

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

Be Faithful To That Which Exists Within Yourself.

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

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

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 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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

It Is With Noble Sentiments That Bad Literature Gets Written.

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.

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

There Are Admirable Potentialities In Every Human Being.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

Nothing Prevents Happiness Like The Memory Of Happiness.

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

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

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

Creative Collaboration

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.

Solitude Is Bearable Only With God.

The Work Of Art Is The Exaggeration Of An Idea.

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

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

The Most Gifted Natures Are Perhaps Also The Most Trembling.

Sin Is Whatever Obscures The Soul.

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

I Intend To Bring You Strength, Joy, Courage, Perspicacity, Defiance.

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

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.

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

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

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

Often With Good Sentiments We Produce Bad Literature.

Most Quarrels Amplify A Misunderstanding.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

A Work Of Art Is An Exaggeration.

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

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

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

Faith Can Move Mountains; True: Mountains Of Stupidity.

Understand That The Only Possession Of Any Value Is Life.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

Whither Should We Aim If Not Towards God?

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.

How Much More Sensuality Invites To Art Than Does Sentimentality.

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

Nothing Blocks Happiness Like Happiness Remembered.

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

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

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

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

Profound Optimism Is Always On The Side Of The Tortured.

Only Fools Don't Contradict Themselves

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

Not Everyone Can Be An Orphan.

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

Too Chaste A Youth Leads To A Dissolute Old Age.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

Understanding Is The Beginning Of Approving.

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

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 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.

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

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 Wise Man Is Astonished By Anything.

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.

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.

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?

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

Without Mysticism Man Can Achieve Nothing Great.

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

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 .

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

Greatest Victory

Wisdom Comes Not From Reason But From Love.

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

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

The World Will Be Saved By One Or Two People.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

Sadness Is Almost Never Anything But A Form Of Fatigue.

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

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

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

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

The Wise Man Is He Who Constantly Wonders Afresh.

The Scholar Seeks Truth, The Artist Finds.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

One Completely Overcomes Only What One Assimilates.

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

Sadness Is A State Of Sin.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

Man! The Most Complex Of Creatures, And For This Reason The Most Dependant Of Creatures. On Everything That Has Formed You, You May Depend. Do Not Balk At This Apparent Slavery....a Debtor To Many, You Pay For Your Advantages By The Same Number Of Dependencies. Understand That Independence Is A Form Of Poverty; That Many Things Claim You, That Many Also Claim Kinship With You.

Drunkenness Is Never Anything But A Substitute For Happiness.

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.

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.

Please Do Not Understand Me Too Quickly.

Fear Of Ridicule Begets The Worst Cowardice.

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.

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.

He Who Wants A Rose Must Respect Her Thorn.

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.

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

The Nationalist Has A Broad Hatred And A Narrow Love.

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

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

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