Andre Gide

“Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it.”

“It is only in adventure that some people succeed in knowing themselves - in finding themselves.”

“Through loyalty to the past, our mind refuses to realize that tomorrow's joy is possible only if today's makes way for it; that each wave owes the beauty of its line only to the withdrawal of the preceding one.”

“Nothing prevents happiness like the memory of happiness.”

“It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for something you are not.”

“Be faithful to that which exists within yourself.”

“Work and struggle and never accept an evil that you can change.”

“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.”

“It is unthinkable for a Frenchman to arrive at middle age without having syphilis and the Cross of the Legion of Honor.”

“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.”

“The most important things to say are those which often I did not think necessary for me to say - because they were too obvious.”

“Complete possession is proved only by giving. All you are unable to give possesses you.”

“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.”

“There are very few monsters who warrant the fear we have of them.”

“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.”

“Nothing is so silly as the expression of a man who is being complimented.”

“Only those things are beautiful which are inspired by madness and written by reason.”

“Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.”

“The most decisive actions of life are most often unconsidered actions.”