Henri Frederic Amiel Quotes & Sayings

Righteous ends, thus approved, absolve of guilt the most violent means. — Henri Frederic Amiel

Great men are true men, the men in whom nature has succeeded. They are not extraordinary - they are in the true order. It is the other species of men who are not what they ought to be. — Henri Frederic Amiel

Doing easily what others find difficult is talent; doing what is impossible for talent is genius. — Henri Frederic Amiel

Any landscape is a condition of the spirit. — Henri Frederic Amiel

Philosophy starts with doubt and loves only truth. — Henri Frederic Amiel

Whenever conscience speaks with a divided, uncertain, and disputed voice, it is not the voice of God. Descend still deeper into yourself, until you hear nothing but a clear, undivided voice, a voice which does away with doubt and brings with it persuasion, light, and serenity. — Henri Frederic Amiel

all appears to change when we change — Henri Frederic Amiel

Our greatest illusion is to believe that we are what we think ourselves to be. — Henri Frederic Amiel

The fire which enlightens is the same fire which consumes. — Henri Frederic Amiel

The immense majority of our species are candidates for humanity, and nothing more. — Henri Frederic Amiel

Man is a willful and covetous animal, who makes use of his intellect to satisfy his inclinations, but who cares nothing for truth, who rebels against personal discipline, who hates disinterested thought and the idea of self-education. Wisdom offends him, because it rouses in him disturbance and confusion, and because he will not see himself as he is. — Henri Frederic Amiel

Put personal ambition away from you, and then you will find consolation in living or in dying, whatever may happen to you. — Henri Frederic Amiel

To live we must conquer incessantly, we must have the courage to be happy. — Henri Frederic Amiel

About Jesus we must believe no one but himself. — Henri Frederic Amiel

Each man enters into God so much as God enters into him. — Henri Frederic Amiel

A journal takes the place of a confidant, that is, of friend or wife; it becomes a substitute for production, a substitute for country and public. It is a grief-cheating device, a mode of escape and withdrawal; but, factotum as it is, though it takes the place of everything, properly speaking it represents nothing at all ... — Henri Frederic Amiel

Heroism is the brilliant triumph of the soul over the flesh - over fear ... Heroism is the dazzling and glorious concentration of courage. — Henri Frederic Amiel

Our dependence outweighs our independence, for we are independent only in our desire, while we are dependent on our health, on nature, on society, on everything in us and outside us. — Henri Frederic Amiel

To know where one is going and what one wishes - this is order ... to organize one's life to distribute one's time ... all this belong to and is included in the word order. — Henri Frederic Amiel

The mind must have for ballast the clear conception of duty, if it is not to fluctuate between levity and despair. — Henri Frederic Amiel

I can find no words for what I feel. My consciousness is withdrawn into itself; I hear my heart beating, and my life passing. It seems to me that I have become a statue on the banks of the river of time, that I am the spectator of some mystery, and shall issue from it old, or no longer capable of age. — Henri Frederic Amiel

To be always ready a man must be able to cut a knot, for everything cannot be untied. — Henri Frederic Amiel

Common sense is calculation applied to life. — Henri Frederic Amiel

Christianity, if it is to triumph over pantheism, must absorb it. To our pusillanimous eyes Jesus would have borne the marks of a hateful pantheism, for he confirmed the Biblical phrase "ye are gods," and so would St. Paul, who tells us that we are of "the race of God." Our century wants a new theology - that is to say, a more profound explanation of the nature of Christ and of the light which it flashes upon heaven and upon humanity. — Henri Frederic Amiel

Men of genius supply the substance of history, while the mass of men are but the critical filter, the limiting, slackening, passive force needed for the modification of ideas supplied by genius. — Henri Frederic Amiel

True poetry is truer than science, because it is synthetic, and seizes at once what the combination of all the sciences is able, at most, to attain as a final result. — Henri Frederic Amiel

Latent genius is but a presumption. Everything that can be, is bound to come into being, and what never comes into being is nothing. — Henri Frederic Amiel

Man becomes man only by his intelligence, but he is man only by his heart. — Henri Frederic Amiel

He who is silent is forgotten; he who does not advance falls back; he who stops is overwhelmed; out distanced, crushed; he who ceases to grow becomes smaller; he who leaves off, gives up; the condition of standing still is the beginning of the end. — Henri Frederic Amiel

Life is short and we never have enough time for the hearts of those who travel the way with us. O, be swift to love! Make haste to be kind. — Henri Frederic Amiel

A microscopic phantom of the universe; this is all that we are able to be. — Henri Frederic Amiel

The philosopher is like a man fasting in the midst of universal intoxication. He alone perceives the illusion of which all creatures are the willing playthings; he is less duped than his neighbour by his own nature. — Henri Frederic Amiel

We only understand that which already is within us. — Henri Frederic Amiel

The history of man is essentially zoological; it becomes human late in the day, and then only in the beautiful souls, the souls alive to justice, goodness, enthusiasm, and devotion. The angel shows itself rarely and with difficulty through the highly-organized brute. — Henri Frederic Amiel

The soul may be immortal because she is fitted to rise towards that which is neither born nor dies, towards that which exists substantially, necessarily, invariably, that is to say towards God. — Henri Frederic Amiel

Our duty is to be useful, not according to our desires but according to our powers. — Henri Frederic Amiel

The test of every religious, political, or educational system is the men which it forms — Henri Frederic Amiel

Are we not all shipwrecked, ... condemned to death? ... However impatient our neighbours make us, however much indignation our race arouses, we are all bound together, and the companions of a chain-gang have everything to lose by mutual insults ... — Henri Frederic Amiel

Destiny has two ways of crushing us - by refusing our wishes and by fulfilling them. — Henri Frederic Amiel

Common sense is the measure of the possible; it is composed of experience and prevision; it is calculation applied to life. — Henri Frederic Amiel

To depersonalize man is the dominant drift of our times. — Henri Frederic Amiel

Analysis kills spontaneity. The grain once ground into flour springs and germinates no more. — Henri Frederic Amiel

Pure truth cannot be assimilated by the crowd; it must be communicated by contagion. — Henri Frederic Amiel

Tell me what you feel in your room when the full moon is shining in upon you and your lamp is dying out, and I will tell you how old you are, and I shall know if you are happy. — Henri Frederic Amiel

To win true peace, a man needs to feel himself directed, pardoned, and sustained by a supreme power, to feel himself in the right road, at the point where God would have him be - in order with God and the universe. This faith gives strength and calm. — Henri Frederic Amiel

I'm not interested in age. People who tell me their age are silly. You're as old as you feel. — Henri Frederic Amiel

The masses are the material of democracy, but its form-that is to say, the laws which express the general reason, justice, and utility-can only be rightly shaped by wisdom, which is by no means a universal property. — Henri Frederic Amiel

Happiness does away with ugliness, and even makes the beauty of beauty. — Henri Frederic Amiel

Dare to be what you are, and learn to resign with a good grace all that you are not and to believe in your own individuality. — Henri Frederic Amiel

Sacrifice still exists everywhere, and everywhere the elect of each generation suffers for the salvation of the rest. — Henri Frederic Amiel

Joy is the vital air of the soul. — Henri Frederic Amiel

A man must be able to cut a knot, for everything cannot be untied; he must know how to disengage what is essential from the detail in which it is enwrapped, for everything cannot be equally considered; in a word, he must be able to simplify his duties, his business and his life. — Henri Frederic Amiel

To marry unequally is to suffer equally. — Henri Frederic Amiel

A man only understands what is akin to something already existing in himself. — Henri Frederic Amiel

Materialism coarsens and petrifies everything, making everything vulgar, and every truth false. — Henri Frederic Amiel

If nationality is consent, the state is compulsion. — Henri Frederic Amiel

Let us be true: this is the highest maxim of art and of life, the secret of eloquence and of virtue, and of all moral authority. — Henri Frederic Amiel

To do easily what is difficult for others is the mark of talent. To do what is impossible for talent is the mark of genius. — Henri Frederic Amiel

I do not deny the rights of democracy, but I have no illusions as to the uses that will be made of those rights so long as wisdom is rare and pride abundant — Henri Frederic Amiel

I find myself regarding existence as though from beyond the tomb, from another world; all is strange to me; I am, as it were, outside my own body and individuality; I am depersonalized, detached, cut adrift. Is this madness? — Henri Frederic Amiel

A thousand things advance; nine hundred and ninety nine retreat; That is progress. — Henri Frederic Amiel

So long as a person is capable of self-renewal they are a living being. — Henri Frederic Amiel

Emancipation from error is the condition of real knowledge. — Henri Frederic Amiel

[I]t is truth alone-scientific, established, proved, and rational truth-which is capable of satisfying nowadays the awakened minds of all classes. We may still say perhaps, 'faith governs the world,'-but the faith of the present is no longer in revelation or in the priest-it is in reason and in science. — Henri Frederic Amiel

To feel keenly the poetry of a morning's roses, one has to have just escaped from the claws of this vulture which we call sickness. — Henri Frederic Amiel

It is not what he has, nor even what he does, which directly expresses the worth of a man, but what he is. — Henri Frederic Amiel

War is a brutal and fierce means of pacification; it means the suppression of resistance by the destruction or enslavement of the conquered. — Henri Frederic Amiel

The laws of animality govern almost the whole of history. — Henri Frederic Amiel

Peace is not in itself a dream, but we know it only as the result of a momentary equilibrium
an accident. — Henri Frederic Amiel

Hope is only the love of life. — Henri Frederic Amiel

Civilization is first of all a moral thing. Without truth, respect for duty, love of neighbor, and virtue, everything is destroyed. The morality of a society is alone the basis of civilization. — Henri Frederic Amiel

Let mystery have its place in you; do not be always turning up your whole soil with the plowshare of self-examination, but leave a little fallow corner in your heart ready for any seed the winds may bring, and reserve a nook of shadow for the passing bird; keep a place in your heart for the unexpected guests, an altar for the unknown God. Then if a bird sing among your branches, do not be too eager to tame it. If you are conscious of something new - thought or feeling, wakening in the depths of your being - do not be in a hurry to let in light upon it, to look at it; let the springing germ have the protection of being forgotten, hedge it round with quiet, and do not break in upon its darkness. — Henri Frederic Amiel

Before giving advice we must have secured its acceptance, or, rather, have made it desired. — Henri Frederic Amiel

We become actors without realizing it, and actors without wanting to. — Henri Frederic Amiel

Criticism is above all a gift, an intuition, a matter of tact and flair; it cannot be taught or demonstrated
it is an art. — Henri Frederic Amiel

To understand is to possess the thing understood, first by sympathy and then by intelligence. — Henri Frederic Amiel

Let us never be afraid of innocent joy; God is good and what he does is well done; resign yourself to everything, even happiness; ask for the spirit of sacrifice, of detachment, of renunciation, and above all, for the spirit of joy and gratitude. — Henri Frederic Amiel

If ignorance and passion are the foes of popular morality, it must be confessed that moral indifference is the malady of the cultivated classes. — Henri Frederic Amiel

Love is like swallowing hot chocolate before it has cooled off. It takes you by surprise at first, but keeps you warm for a long time. — Henri Frederic Amiel

Love is faith and one faith leads to another. — Henri Frederic Amiel

It would have been a joy to me to be smiled upon, loved, encouraged, welcomed, and to obtain what I was so ready to give, kindness and goodwill. But to hunt down consideration and reputation
to force the esteem of others
seemed to me an effort unworthy of myself, almost a degradation. — Henri Frederic Amiel

Man never knows what he wants; he aspires to penetrate mysteries and as soon as he has, wants to re-establish them. Ignorance irritates him and knowledge cloys. — Henri Frederic Amiel

The more a man loves, the more he suffers. The sum of possible grief for each soul is in proportion to its degree of perfection. — Henri Frederic Amiel

Spite is anger which is afraid to show itself, it is an impotent fury conscious of its impotence. — Henri Frederic Amiel

What we call little things are merely the causes of great things. — Henri Frederic Amiel

The man who has no inner-life is a slave to his surroundings. — Henri Frederic Amiel

Every living being seeks instinctively to complete itself. — Henri Frederic Amiel

Our systems, perhaps, are nothing more than an unconscious apology for our faults, a gigantic scaffolding whose object is to hide from us our favorite sin. — Henri Frederic Amiel

I am a spectator, so to speak, of the molecular whirlwind which men call individual life; I am conscious of an incessant metamorphosis, an irresistible movement of existence, which is going on within me
and this phenomenology of myself serves as a window opened upon the mystery of the world. — Henri Frederic Amiel

An error is the more dangerous in proportion to the degree of truth which it contains. — Henri Frederic Amiel

Philosophy means the complete liberty of the mind. — Henri Frederic Amiel

Clever people will recognize and tolerate nothing but cleverness. — Henri Frederic Amiel

We are never more discontented with others than when we are discontented with ourselves. — Henri Frederic Amiel

Kindness is gladdening the hearts of those who are traveling the dark journey with us. — Henri Frederic Amiel

The efficacy of religion lies precisely in what is not rational, philosophic, nor eternal; its efficacy lies in the unforeseen, the miraculous, the extraordinary. Thus religion attracts more devotion according as it demands more faith - that is to say, as it becomes more incredible to the profane mind. — Henri Frederic Amiel

Blessed be childhood, which brings down something of heaven into the midst of our rough earthliness. — Henri Frederic Amiel

Melancholy is at the bottom of everything, just as at the end of all rivers is the sea. Can it be otherwise in a world where nothing lasts, where all that we have loved or shall love must die? Is death, then, the secret of life? The gloom of an eternal mourning enwraps, more or less closely, every serious and thoughtful soul, as night enwraps the universe. — Henri Frederic Amiel

There is no respect for others without humility in one's self. — Henri Frederic Amiel

Man is a passion which brings a will into play, which works an intelligence. — Henri Frederic Amiel

Will localizes us, thought universalizes us. — Henri Frederic Amiel