-André Gide
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- “It is not always by plugging away at a difficulty and sticking at it that one overcomes it; but rather, often by working on the one next to it. Certain people and certain things require to be approached on an angle.”
- “A straight path never leads anywhere except to the objective.”
- “Seize from every moment its unique novelty, and do not prepare your joys.”
- “It is one of the most characteristic facts of a progressive society that in it most things which individuals strive for can be obtained only through further progress. This follows from the necessary character of the process: new knowledge and its benefits can spread only gradually, and the ambitions of the many will always be determined by what is as yet accessible only to the few. It is misleading to think of those new possibilities as if they were, from the beginning, a common possession of society which its members could deliberately share; they become a common possession only through that slow process by which the achievements of the few are made available to the many. This is often obscured by the exaggerated attention usually given to a few conspicuous major steps in the development. But, more often than not, major discoveries merely open new vistas, and long further efforts are necessary before the new knowledge that has sprung up somewhere can be put to general use. It will have to pass through a long course of adaptation, selection, combination, and improvement before full use can be made of it. This means that there will always be people who already benefit from new achievements that have not yet reached others.”
- “Let no one say that I have said nothing new; the arrangement of the subject is new.”