Henri Frederic Amiel Quotes

Each man enters into God so much as God enters into him.

For purposes of action nothing is more useful than narrowness of thought combined with energy of will.

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

What we call little things are merely the causes of great things; they are the beginning, the embryo, and it is the point of departure which, generally speaking, decides the whole future of an existence. One single black speck may be the beginning of gangrene, of a storm, of a revolution.

The 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.

Will localizes us, thought universalizes us.

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

A musical theme once exhausted, finds its due refuge and repose in silence.

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

Men don't achieve truth because they lack humility and love of truth. They won't criticize their own beliefs. Truth would overwhelm them.

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

Time is but the space between our memories; as soon as we cease to perceive this space, time has disappeared.

Each bud flowers but once and each flower has but its minute of perfect beauty; so, in the garden of the soul each feeling has, as it were, its flowering instant, its one and only moment of expansive grace and radiant kingship.

Without passion man is a mere latent force and possibility, like the flint which awaits the shock of the iron before it can give forth its spark.

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.

Music is harmony, harmony is perfection, perfection is our dream, and our dream is heaven.

Mother of Marvels, mysterious and tender Nature, why do we not live more in thee.

What we call little things are merely the causes of great things.

The great artist and thinker are the simplifiers.

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

If man was what he ought to be, he would be adored by the animals.

The growth and development of the soul is more important than power and glory.

Knowledge, love, power-there is the complete life.

To marry unequally is to suffer equally.

The test of every religious, political, or educational system, is the man which it forms. If a system injures the intelligence it is bad. If it injures the character it is vicious. If it injures the conscience it is criminal.

Happiness gives us the energy which is the basis of health.

A belief is not true simply because it is useful.

Every man is a priest, even involuntarily; his conduct is an unspoken sermon, which is forever preaching to others.

Time is the supreme illusion. It is but the inner prism by which we decompose being and life, the mode under which we perceive successively what is simultaneous in idea.

Analysis kills spontaneity. The grain once ground into flour springs and germinates no more.

Self-interest is but the survival of the animal in us. Humanity only begins for man with self-surrender.

He who asks of life nothing but the improvement of his own nature... is less liable than anyone else to miss and waste life.

Men prefer the false due to habit, passion, will. Preference for truth is rare. Men are ruled by their fear of truth.

When everything is in its right place within us, we ourselves are in balance with the whole work of God.

Tears are the symbol of the inability of the soul to restrain its emotion and retain its self command.

The only substance properly so called is the soul.

Self-interest is an inexhaustible source of convenient illusions. The number of beings who wish to see truly is extraordinarily small.

Happiness has no limits, because God has neither bottom nor bounds, and because happiness is nothing but the conquest of God through love.

Order is man's greatest need, and his true well-being.

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.

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.

Time wasted is a theft from God.

Nothing is more characteristic of a man than the manner in which he behaves toward fools.

Materialism coarsens and petrifies everything, making everything vulgar, and every truth false.

To live we must conquer incessantly, we must have the courage to be happy.

It gives liberty and breadth to thought, to learn to judge our own epoch from the point of view of universal history, history from the point of view of geological periods, geology from the point of view of astronomy.

Life is short and we have never too much time for gladdening the hearts of those who are travelling the dark journey with us. Oh be swift to love, make haste to be kind.

He who is too much afraid of being duped has lost the power of being magnanimous.