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 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.”
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.
There are many things that seem impossible only so long as one does not attempt them.
How much more sensuality invites to art than does sentimentality.
Clear and precise ideas are the most dangerous, for one does not dare to change them.
Atheism. There is not a single exalting and emancipating influence that does not in turn become inhibitory.
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.
An opinion, though it is original, does not necessarily differ from the accepted opinion; the important thing is that it does not try to conform to it.
Art is the collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does the better.
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
The most decisive actions of our life -- I mean those that are most likely to decide the whole course of our future -- are, more often than not, unconsidered.
Art begins with resistance-at the point where resistance is overcome. No human masterpiece has ever been created without great labor.
Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does the better.
It is good to follow one's own bent, so long as it leads upward.