Quotes from The Immoralist

“Envying another man's happiness is madness; you wouldn't know what to do with it if you had it.”
― André Gide, quote from The Immoralist

“You have to let other people be right' was his answer to their insults. 'It consoles them for not being anything else.”
― André Gide, quote from The Immoralist

“What would a narrative of happiness be like? All that can be described is what prepares it, and then what destroys it.”
― André Gide, quote from The Immoralist

“A man thinks he owns things, and it is he who is owned”
― André Gide, quote from The Immoralist

“Yet I'm sure there's something more to be read in a man. People dare not -- they dare not turn the page. The laws of mimicry -- I call them the laws of fear. People are afraid to find themselves alone, and don't find themselves at all. I hate this moral agoraphobia -- it's the worst kind of cowardice. You can't create something without being alone. But who's trying to create here? What seems different in yourself: that's the one rare thing you possess, the one thing which gives each of us his worth; and that's just what we try to suppress. We imitate. And we claim to love life.”
― André Gide, quote from The Immoralist

“The capacity to get free is nothing; the capacity to be free is the task.”
― André Gide, quote from The Immoralist

“Nothing is more fatal to happiness than the remembrance of happiness.”
― André Gide, quote from The Immoralist

“I can't expect others to share my virtues. It's good enough for me if they share my vices.”
― André Gide, quote from The Immoralist

“To know how to free oneself is nothing; the arduous thing is to know what to do with one's freedom”
― André Gide, quote from The Immoralist

“Poverty makes a slave out of men. In order to eat he will accept work that gives no pleasure.”
― André Gide, quote from The Immoralist

“After much searching I have found the thing that sets me apart: a sort of stubborn attachment to evil.”
― André Gide, quote from The Immoralist

“The loveliest creations of men are persistently painful. What would be the description of happiness?”
― André Gide, quote from The Immoralist

“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.”
― André Gide, quote from The Immoralist

“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.”
― André Gide, quote from The Immoralist

“Most people believe it is only by constraint they can get any good out of themselves, and so they live in a state of psychological distortion. It is his own self that each of them is most afraid of resembling. Each of them sets up a pattern and imitates it; he doesn't even choose the pattern he imitates: he accepts a pattern that has been chosen for him. And yet I verily believe there are other things to be read in man. But people don't dare to - they don't dare to turn the page. Laws of imitation! Laws of fear, I call them. The fear of finding oneself alone - that is what they suffer from - and so they don't find themselves at all. I detest such moral agoraphobia - the most odious cowardice I call it. Why, one always has to be alone to invent anything - but they don't want to invent anything. The part in each of us that we feel is different from other people is just the part that is rare, the part that makes our special value - and that is the very thing people try to suppress. They go on imitating. And yet they think they love life.”
― André Gide, quote from The Immoralist

“The very things that separated me and distinguished me from other people were what mattered; the very things no one else would or could say, these were the things I had to say.”
― André Gide, quote from The Immoralist

“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.”
― André Gide, quote from The Immoralist

“I like life well enough to want to live it awake”
― André Gide, quote from The Immoralist

“The things one feels are different about oneself are the things that are rare, that give each person their value - and these are the things they try to repress. The imitate and make out they love life!”
― André Gide, quote from The Immoralist

“I had forgotten I was alone; I sat there, waiting for nothing, oblivious to the time.”
― André Gide, quote from The Immoralist

“One must allow other people to be right," he used to say when he was insulted, "It consoles them for not being anything else.”
― André Gide, quote from The Immoralist

“Terre en vacance d'oeuvres d'art. Je méprise ceux qui ne savent reconnaître la beauté que transcrite déjà et toute interprétée. Le peuple arabe a ceci d'admirable que, son art, il le vit, il le chante et le dissipe au jour le jour; il ne le fixe point et ne l'embaume en aucune oeuvre. C'est la cause et l'effet de l'absence de grands artistes. J'ai toujours cru les grands artistes ceux qui osent donner droit de beauté à des choses si naturelles qu'elles font dire après à qui les voit : 'Comment n'avais-je pas compris jusqu'alors que cela était aussi beau?...”
― André Gide, quote from The Immoralist

“…the facts of history all appeared to me like specimens in a herbarium, permanently dried, so that it was easy to forget they had once upon a time been juicy with sap and alive in the sun.”
― André Gide, quote from The Immoralist

“I have a horror of rest; possessions encourage one to indulge in it, and there's nothing like security for making one fall asleep; I like life well enough to live it awake, and so, in the very midst of my riches, I maintain the sensation of a state of precariousness, by which means I aggravate, or at any rate intensify, my life. I will not say I like danger, but I like life to be hazardous, and I want it to demand at every moment the whole of my courage, my happiness, my health...”
― André Gide, quote from The Immoralist

“The part in each of us that we feel is different from other people is just the part that is rare, the part that makes our special value - and that is the very thing people try to suppress. They go on imitating. And yet they think they love life”
― André Gide, quote from The Immoralist

“I looked at myself in the mirror and didn't like what I saw.”
― André Gide, quote from The Immoralist

“No estoy ni triste ni alegre; este aire de aquí te llena de una muy vaga exaltación y te hace conocer un estado que parece tan lejano de la alegría como de la pena; quizá esto sea la felicidad.”
― André Gide, quote from The Immoralist

“My eyes filled with tears and I wept long and hard, unable, and unwilling, to stop.”
― André Gide, quote from The Immoralist

“Oh," I thought, "without a doubt, everything in my life is falling to pieces. Nothing that my hand grasps can my hand hold.”
― André Gide, quote from The Immoralist

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― Thomas Mann, quote from Death in Venice and Seven Other Stories

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