The Immoralist Quotes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Existing is occupation enough.”
― André Gide, 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, The Immoralist

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

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

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

“Do you know why our poetry today and especially our philosophy are such dead issues? Because they've cut themselves off from life. Now, Greece idealized on life's own level: an artist's life was already a poetic achievement; a philosopher's life was an enactment of his philosophy; and when they were a part of life that way, instead of ignoring each other, philosophy could nourish poetry, poetry express philosophy, and together achieve an admirable persuasiveness. Today beauty no longer acts; and action no longer bothers about being beautiful; and wisdom operates on the sidelines.”
― André Gide, The Immoralist

“Nothing thwarts happiness so much as the memory of happiness.”
― André Gide, 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, The Immoralist

“The fear of finding oneself alone – that is what they suffer from – and so they don’t find themselves at all.”
― Andre Gide, 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, The Immoralist

“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?”
― André Gide, 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, The Immoralist

“It's madness to envy other people's happiness. Happiness doesn't come of the peg, it has to be made to measure.”
― André Gide, The Immoralist