# André Gide - Quotes: 26 - Author page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/andre-gide ## Books - [The Immoralist](https://www.leafyquotes.com/andre-gide/the-immoralist.md) — 26 quotes ## Recently added quotes > Today beauty no longer acts, and action no longer bothers about being beautiful. p. 111 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/andre-gide/the-immoralist/today-beauty-no-longer.md) > What distinguished me from the rest was what mattered; what no one but I … could say—that was what I had to say. p. 92 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/andre-gide/the-immoralist/what-distinguished-me-from.md) > What interest could I take in myself, except as a perfectible being? This unknown perfection, vaguely as I imagined it, exalted my will as never before in my longing to achieve it; I dedicated this will utterly to fortifying my body. p. 51 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/andre-gide/the-immoralist/what-interest-could.md) > If there’s one thing I detest it’s a man of principles. … You can’t expect any kind of sincerity from him, for he only does what his principles have ordered him to do, or else he considers what he does a transgression. p. 105 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/andre-gide/the-immoralist/if-theres-one.md) > The apple trees planted in rows on the favorable hillsides heralded a splendid crop that summer; I dreamed of the rich burden of fruit beneath which their branches would soon be bending. From this orderly abundance, from this happy subservience, from this smiling cultivation, a harmony was being wrought, no longer fortuitous but imposed, a rhythm, a beauty at once human and natural, in which one could no longer tell what was most admirable, so intimately united into a perfect understanding were the fecund exposition of free nature and man’s skillful effort to order it. What would that effort be, I thought, without the powerful savagery it masters? What would be the savage energy of the overflowing sap without the intelligent effort which channels and discharges it into profusion?—And I let myself dream of such lands where every force was so well controlled, every expenditure so compensated, every exchange so strict, that the slightest waste became evident; then, applying my dream to life, I sketched an ethic which would become a science of self-exploitation perfected by a disciplined intelligence. p. 71 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/andre-gide/the-immoralist/the-apple-trees.md) > As for the philosophers, whose role might have been to instruct me, I had long known what to expect of them; mathematicians or neo-Kantians, they kept as far as possible from troublesome reality, and were no more concerned with life than the algebrist with the existence of the quantities he is measuring. p. 90 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/andre-gide/the-immoralist/as-for-the.md) > My sole effort … was therefore systematically to revile or suppress whatever I believed due merely to past education and to my early moral indoctrination. In deliberate scorn of my own erudition, in disdain for my scholarly pastimes. p. 51 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/andre-gide/the-immoralist/my-sole-effort.md) > Nothing thwarts happiness so much as the memory of happiness. p. 63 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/andre-gide/the-immoralist/nothing-thwarts-happiness.md) > Everything filled me with the joy of being alive until my whole being seemed no more than a hovering rapture: memories or regrets, hope or desire, future and past fell silent; I knew nothing of life but what the moment brought to it, took from it. p. 61 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/andre-gide/the-immoralist/everything-filled-me-with.md) > I made no attempt to conceal the tedium of these encounters. “They’re all alike,” I told her, “and each repeats the next. Whenever I talk to one, it seems to me I’m talking to several.” p. 91 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/andre-gide/the-immoralist/i-made-no-attempt.md) > Their clumsy thoughts were of no interest to me. p. 119 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/andre-gide/the-immoralist/their-clumsy-thoughts.md) > If only the people around us could be convinced. But most of them believe they get nothing good out of themselves except by constraint; they’re only pleased with themselves when they’re under duress. If there’s one thing each of them claims not to resemble it’s … himself. Instead he sets up a model, then imitates it; he doesn’t even choose the model—he accepts it ready-made. p. 104 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/andre-gide/the-immoralist/if-only-the.md)