Wisdom is not in reason, but in love.

The narrator writes for a future adolescent and imagines a freer, more fulfilled life. Immediately before this paragraph he asks to be released from the chains of logic; immediately after the sentence he regrets having lived too cautiously and invites the beloved to go further with him. It is a lyrical appeal to love and freedom, not an argument against learning.

A life guided only by calculation misses a wisdom that love can disclose.

English Wikiquote places the line in Les Nourritures terrestres (1897), book I. The exact sentence is in Les Nouvelles Nourritures (1935), Livre premier, I. The earlier book does contain a different exchange with Ménalque about wisdom and love, but that is not this sentence.

Life, Love, Reason, Emotions, Wisdom

• Nathanaël—let the importance be in your gaze, not in the thing you look at.
• To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment. (misattributed) Ralph Waldo Emerson
• It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not.
• Do not go where the path may lead; go instead where there is no path and leave a trail. (misattributed) Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Never explain — your friends do not need it and your enemies will not believe you anyway. Elbert Hubbard

• en.wikiquote.org/wiki/André_Gide
• fondation-catherine-gide.org/actualites/archives-contemporaines

André Gide, André Gide, Les Nouvelles Nourritures (1935), Livre premier, I; French e-text headed Les Nouvelles Nourritures terrestres, Ebooks libres et gratuits, Livre premier, I, immediately before « Rencontres ». Spoken by the first-person lyrical narrator. Checked at Quotogeny, https://quotogeny.com/q/wisdom-is-not-in-reason-but-in-love/ (26 October 2026).

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