The Immoralist

by André Gide

If I did not love my fiancée, as I say, at least I had never loved any other woman. That was enough, I assumed, to insure our happiness; and though I knew nothing about myself as yet,

I knew nothing about myself.

“After all, what did life have in store for me? I worked to the end, did my duty resolutely, devotedly. The rest … what does it matter?”

Being is occupation enough.

“You reject God’s help?” “I’d owe Him something afterward. It makes for obligations; I don’t want any.”

It seemed to me that until this moment I had felt so little by virtue of thinking so much that I was astonished by a discovery: sensation was becoming as powerful as thoughts.

“When thou wast young, thou girdest thyself and walkest whither thou wouldst; but when thou shalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy hands …” Thou shalt stretch forth thy hands …

I might thus delude myself; here, no longer. Everything was to teach me what still astonished me: I had changed.

I was finding myself a different person and was happy to exist apart from them.

To the man whom death’s wing has touched, what once seemed important is so no longer; and other things become so which once did not seem important or which he did not even know existed. The layers of acquired knowledge peel away from the mind like a cosmetic and reveal, in patches, the naked flesh beneath, the authentic being hidden there.

Our happiness, during this last part of the trip, was so untroubled, so calm, that I have nothing to tell about it.

“By considering only income, you don’t realize your capital is deteriorating. Mistreating the soil makes it lose its value, little by little.” “If a tenant could produce more under a better system, I doubt if he’d refuse to try it—I know these people, they’re too interested in profits not to make as much as they can.”

Comrade!

Marceline had a tender way of leaning against my shoulder; and we would stay there until dark, feeling the day dissolve in us, without movement, without speech.

Moments like these michel doesnt see the love that he has

I was more or less obliged by them to act a part—either to resemble the man they thought I still was, or else appear to be pretending; so to make things easier, I acted as if I had the thoughts and tastes they attributed to me. You cannot be sincere and at the same time seem so.

Schopenhauer-esque

Finally, carrying my notion to its conclusion, I said that Culture, born of life, ultimately kills life.

nietzsche

Sometimes I’m afraid that what I have suppressed will take its revenge.