To understand is to possess the thing understood, first by sympathy and then by intelligence.
Henri Frederic AmielI 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 AmielWhen everything is in its right place within us, we ourselves are in balance with the whole work of God.
Henri Frederic AmielWe are always making God our accomplice so that we may legalize our own inequities.
Henri Frederic AmielI 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 My consciousness is withdrawn into itself; I hear my heart beating, and my life passing.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 AmielThe obscure only exists that it may cease to exist. In it lies the opportunity of all victory and all progress. Whether it call itself fatality, death, night, or matter, it is the pedestal of life, of light, of liberty and the spirit. For it represents resistance -- that is to say, the fulcrum of all activity, the occasion for its development and its triumph.
Henri Frederic Amiel