Andre Gide
Andre Gide
André Paul Guillaume Gidewas a French author and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1947 "for his comprehensive and artistically significant writings, in which human problems and conditions have been presented with a fearless love of truth and keen psychological insight". Gide's career ranged from its beginnings in the symbolist movement, to the advent of anticolonialism between the two World Wars...
NationalityFrench
ProfessionAutobiographer
Date of Birth22 November 1869
CountryFrance
The scholar seeks truth, the artist finds.
I have no use for knowledge that has not been preceded by a sensation
In order to be utterly happy the only thing necessary is to refrain from comparing this moment with other moments in the past, which I often did not fully enjoy because I was comparing them with other moments of the future.
Long only for what you have.
I wished for nothing beyond her smile, and to walk with her thus, hand in hand, along a sun warmed, flower bordered path.
We should enjoy this summer, flower by flower, as if it were to be the last one we’ll see.
Understand that the only possession of any value is life.
The capacity to get free is nothing; the capacity to be free is the task.
Every instant of our lives is essentially irreplaceable: you must know this in order to concentrate on life.
I prefer granting with a good grace what I know I shan't be able to prevent.
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.
A man thinks he owns things, and it is he who is owned
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.
The important thing is being capable of emotions, but to experience only one's own would be a sorry limitation.