Skip to content

At times it seems to me that I am living my life backwards, and that at the approach of old age my real youth will begin. My soul was born covered with wrinkles—wrinkles my ancestors and parents most assiduously put there and that I had the greatest trouble removing.

— André Gide Pretexts: Reflections on Literature and Morality (1964)

Another quote →

Topics

Age

More quotes by André Gide

To know how to free oneself is nothing; the arduous thing is to know what to do with one's freedom.

The Immoralist (1902)

There are many things that seem impossible only so long as one does not attempt them.

Si le grain ne meurt [If It Die (1924)

The sole art that suits me is that which, rising from unrest, tends toward serenity.

There is no feeling so simple that it is not immediately complicated and distorted by introspection.

Pretexts: Reflections on Literature and Morality (1964)

Generally among intelligent people are found nothing but paralytics and among men of action nothing but fools.

Pretexts: Reflections on Literature and Morality (1964)

All André Gide quotes →

You may also like

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts.

William Shakespeare As You Like It (1599)

From now on, everything in life will appear blurry to me. What’s the point of wiping my glasses when my vision has already left me?"

Sanu Sharma

The land of easy mathematics where he who works adds up and he who retires subtracts.

Núria Añó

Older people are most beautiful when they have what is lacking in the young: poise, erudition, wisdom, phronesis, and this post-heroic absence of agitation.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: André Gide (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.