André Gide

André Gide (1869-1951) was a prolific writer.The author of more than 50 books, Gide was an essayist, critic, novelist, and dramatist, Gide has come to be regarded as the father of modern French literature. His works include Les Nourritures terrestres (1897), L'Immoraliste (1902), La Porte étroite (1909, Strait is the Gate), Si le grain ne meurt (1926, If I die...), Les Faux-Monnayeurs (1925 The Counterfeiters), and his Journal (1939-50). He was awarded the Prix Nobel for literature in 1947, and was co-founder of the Nouvelle Revue Française, a famous monthly journal on the arts. Widely read and even more widely discussed, particularly for his frank accounts of his homosexual experiences, he influenced the aesthetic and moral values of a whole inter-war generation. The following pronouncements by Gide are from The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations.

M´est avis...que le profit n´est pas toujours ce qui mène l´homme; qu´il y a des actions désintéressées...Par désintéressé j´entends: gratuit. Et que le mal, ce que l´on appelle: le mal, peut être aussi gratuit que le bien.
I believe...that profit is not always what motivates man; that there are disinterested actions...By disinterested I mean: gratuitous. And that evil acts, what people call evil, can be as gratuitous as good acts. Les Caves du Vatican (1914)

Transporter le drame sur le plan moral, c'était pourtant l´effort du Christianisme.
The whole effect of Christianity was to transfer the drama onto the moral plane. Les Faux-Monnayeurs (1925) (translated by Dorothy Bussy)

Le grand secret de Stendhal, sa grande malice, c´est d´écrire tout de suite...pensée émue.
The great secret of Stendhal, his great shrewdness, consisted in writing at once...thought charged with emotion. Journal (1939) (translated by Justin O´Brien)

Hugo—hélas!
Hugo—alas! (When asked who was the greatest 19th-century poet, in Claude Martin La Maturité d'André Gide, 1977)

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