It is with noble sentiments that bad literature gets written.

Gide’s remark is a warning against confusing moral intention with artistic achievement. “Noble sentiments” can become a substitute for craft: writers may rely on edifying messages, uplift, or righteous causes to excuse sentimentality, cliché, or weak form. The line also reflects a modernist suspicion of didactic art—when literature aims primarily to instruct or moralize, it can harden into propaganda or pious platitude rather than truthfully rendered experience. Gide is not attacking ethical feeling itself so much as the complacency it can breed: good literature demands precision, complexity, and honesty, even (or especially) when dealing with admirable ideals.