Henri Frederic Amiel Quotes

The germs of all things are in every heart, and the greatest criminals as well as the greatest heroes are but different modes of ourselves.

The tragic solemnity of existence strikes us with terrible force on that morning when we wake to find the mournful words "too late" ringing in our ears.

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?

Every landscape is, as it were, a state of the soul, and whoever penetrates into both is astonished to find how much likeness there is in each detail.

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.

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.

Mozart has the classic purity of light and the blue ocean; Beethoven the romantic grandeur which belongs to the storms of air and sea, and while the soul of Mozart seems to dwell on the ethereal peaks of Olympus, that of Beethoven climbs shuddering the storm-beaten sides of a Sinai. Blessed be they both! Each represents a moment of the ideal life, each does us good. Our love is due to both.

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.

Man is a passion which brings a will into play, which works an intelligence.

Man becomes man only by his intelligence, but he is man only by his heart.

I have never felt any inward assurance of genius, or any presentiment of glory or of happiness. I have never seen myself in imagination great or famous, or even a husband, a father, an influential citizen. This indifference to the future, this absolute self-distrust, are, no doubt, to be taken as signs. What dreams I have are all vague and indefinite; I ought not to live, for I am now scarcely capable of living.

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

Philosophy means the complete liberty of the mind, and therefore independence of all social, political or religious prejudice... It loves one thing only... truth.

The philosopher aspires to explain away all mysteries, to dissolve them into light. Mystery, on the other hand, is demanded and pursued by the religious instinct; mystery constitutes the essence of worship.

Life is but a daily oscillation between revolt and submission.

A thousand things advance; nine hundred and ninety nine retreat; That is progress.

To know how to suggest is the great art of teaching. To attain it we must be able to guess what will interest; we must learn to read the childish soul as we might a piece of music. Then, by simply changing the key, we keep up the attraction and vary the song.

Do not despise your situation; in it you must act, suffer, and conquer. From every point on earth we are equally near to heaven and to the infinite.

Let the living live; and you, gather together your thoughts, leave behind you a legacy of feeling and ideas; you will be most useful so.

Truth above all, even when it upsets us and overwhelms us.

Mutual respect implies discretion and reserve even in love itself; it means preserving as much liberty as possible to those whose life we share. We must distrust our instinct of intervention, for the desire to make one's own will prevail is often disguised under the mask of solicitude.

At bottom there is but one subject of study: the forms and metamorphoses of mind. All other subjects may be reduced to that; all other studies bring us back to this study.

The laws of animality govern almost the whole of history.

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.

At bottom, everything depends upon the presence or absence of one single element in the soul - HOPE

It is by teaching that we teach ourselves, by relating that we observe, by affirming that we examine, by showing that we look, by writing that we think, by pumping that we draw water into the well.

We are never more discontented with others than when we are discontented with ourselves.

From every spot on earth we are equally near heaven and the infinite.

Man is saved by love and duty, and by the hope that springs from duty, or rather from the moral facts of consciousness, as a flower springs from the soil.

The immense majority of our species are candidates for humanity, and nothing more.

[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.

Every situation is an equilibrium of forces; every life is a struggle between opposing forces working within the limits of a certain equilibrium

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 neighbor by his own nature. He judges more sanely, he sees things as they are. It is in this that his liberty consists - in the ability to see clearly and soberly, in the power of mental record.

About Jesus we must believe no one but himself.

The great majority of men are but tangled skeins, imperfect keyboards, so many specimens of restless or stagnant chaos--and what makes their situation almost hopeless is the fact that they take pleasure in it. There is no curing a sick man who believes himself in health.

In health there is freedom. Health is the first of all liberties.

The man who insists upon seeing with perfect clearness before he decides, never decides. Accept life, and you must accept regret.

A modest garden contains, for those who know how to look and to wait, more instruction than a library.

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

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.

To repel one's cross is to make it heavier.

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

Composition is a process of combination, in which thought puts together complementary truths, and talent fuses into harmony the most contrary qualities of style. So that there is no composition without effort, without pain even, as in all bringing forth. The reward is the giving birth to something living--something, that is to say, which, by a kind of magic, makes a living unity out of such opposed attributes as orderliness and spontaneity, thought and imagination, solidity and charm.

Analysis kills spontaneity.

Learn to... be what you are, and learn to resign with a good grace all that you are not.

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

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.

The ideal, after all, is true than the real: for the ideal is the eternal element in perishable things.