André Gide

“You can never cross the ocean until you have the courage to lose sight of the shore”

“Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does, the better.”

“Aren’t you strong enough to walk alone? We must each of us find God by ourselves.”

“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 cowardic...”

“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...”

“I do not love men: I love what devours them.”

“Do not do what someone else could do as well as you. Do not say, do not write what someone else could say, could write as well as you. Care for nothing in yourself but what you feel exists nowhere else. And, out of yourself create, impatiently or patiently, the most irreplaceable of beings.”

“He who wants a rose must respect her thorn.”

“Most often people seek in life occasions for persisting in their opinions rather than for educating themselves.”