# Quote — André Gide, The Immoralist

> 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.

- Author: [André Gide](https://www.leafyquotes.com/andre-gide.md)
- Book: [The Immoralist](https://www.leafyquotes.com/andre-gide/the-immoralist.md)
- Page: 71
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Immoralist#Quotes) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/andre-gide/the-immoralist/the-apple-trees

## More from this book

> 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)