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"Nothing is so silly as the expression of a man who is being complimented."
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"Great is the difference betwixt a man's being frightened at, and humbled for his sins."

"It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad."

"The years between fifty and seventy are the hardest. You are always being asked to do things, and yet you are not decrepit enough to turn them down."

"To be trusted is a greater compliment than being loved."

"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself."

"And they write innumerable books; being too vain and distracted for silence: seeking every one after his own elevation, and dodging his emptiness."
Explore more quotes by Andre Gide

"No theory is good unless it permits, not rest, but the greatest work. No theory is good except on condition that one use it to go on beyond."

"It is not always by plugging away at a difficulty and sticking to it that one overcomes it; often it is by working on the one next to it. Some things and some people have to be approached obliquely, at an angle."

"To read a writer is for me not merely to get an idea of what he says, but to go off with him and travel in his company."

"Everything has been said before, but since nobody listens we have to keep going back and beginning all over again."

"The most important things to say are those which often I did not think necessary for me to say - because they were too obvious."
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