The Immoralist
André Gide
Top 10 Best Quotes
“Envying another man's happiness is madness; you wouldn't know what to do with it if you had it.”
“You have to let other people be right' was his answer to their insults. 'It consoles them for not being anything else.”
“A man thinks he owns things, and it is he who is owned”
“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.”
“Nothing is more fatal to happiness than the remembrance of happiness.”
“The capacity to get free is nothing; the capacity to be free is the task.”
“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.”
“I can't expect others to share my virtues. It's good enough for me if they share my vices.”
“To know how to free oneself is nothing; the arduous thing is to know what to do with one's freedom”
“Poverty makes a slave out of men. In order to eat he will accept work that gives no pleasure.”
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Book Keywords:
individuality, slavery, self, life, self-awareness, philosophy, creativity, inspirational, psychology, freedom, philosophical
