385 Quotes by Andre Gide

Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does, the better.

I have always thought that great artists were those who dared to confer the right of beauty on things so natural that people say on seeing them, "Why did I never realise before that that was beautiful too?

I have always thought that great artists were those who dared to confer the right of beauty on things so natural that people say on seeing them, "Why did I never realize before that that was beautiful too?

Je sens en moi, confusément, des aspirations extraordinaires, des sortes de lames de fond, des mouvements, des agitations incompréhensibles, et que je ne veux pas chercher à comprendre, que je ne veux même pas observer, par crainte de les empêcher de se produire.

To know how to free oneself is nothing; the arduous thing is to know what to do with one's freedom.

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.

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

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.

What a melancholy day!" I said. "Aren't you bored?""Not particularly. I am reading.