“We prefer to go deformed and distorted all our lives rather than not resemble the portrait of ourselves which we ourselves have first drawn. It’s absurd. We run the risk of warping what’s best in us”

—  André Gide

Source: Strait is the Gate and The Vatican Cellars

Last update June 3, 2021. History

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André Gide 74
French novelist and essayist 1869–1951

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“In fact history does not belong to us but rather we to it. Long before we understand ourselves through the process of self-examination, we understand ourselves in a self-evident way in the family, society, and state in which we live. The focus of subjectivity is a distorting mirror. The self awareness of the Individual is only a flickering in the closed circuit of historical life. That is why the prejudices of an individual are — much more than that individual's judgments — the historical reality of his being.”

Source: Truth and Method (1960), p. 289
Variant translation: In truth history does not belong to us but rather we to history. … The focus of subjectivity is a distorted mirror. Individual self-reflection is merely a flickering in the closed circuit of historical life. That is why the prejudices of an individual are —much more than that individual's judgments — the historical reality of his being.
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