Amiel, Henri Frederic
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Amiel, Henri Frederic
So long as a person is capable of self-renewal they are a living being.
Amiel, Henri Frederic
Change
Charm is the quality in others that makes us more satisfied with ourselves.
Amiel, Henri Frederic
Charm
Pure truth cannot be assimilated by the crowd; it must be communicated by contagion.
Amiel, Henri Frederic
Communication
Common sense is the measure of the possible; it is composed of experience and prevision; it is calculation applied to life.
Amiel, Henri Frederic
Common Sense
The best path through life is the highway.
Amiel, Henri Frederic
Direction
Common sense is calculation applied to life.
Amiel, Henri Frederic
Common Sense
It is not what he had, or even what he does which expresses the worth of a man, but what he is.
Amiel, Henri Frederic
Character
Cleverness is serviceable for everything, sufficient for nothing.
Amiel, Henri Frederic
Cleverness
Doing easily what others find difficult is talent; doing what is impossible for talent is genius.
Amiel, Henri Frederic
Genius
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.
Amiel, Henri Frederic
Genius
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.
Amiel, Henri Frederic
Giving
An error is the more dangerous in proportion to the degree of truth which it contains.
Amiel, Henri Frederic
Mistakes
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.
Amiel, Henri Frederic
Greatness
Destiny has two ways of crushing us -- by refusing our wishes and by fulfilling them.
Amiel, Henri Frederic
Fate
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.
Amiel, Henri Frederic
Melancholy
To live we must conquer incessantly, we must have the courage to be happy.
Amiel, Henri Frederic
Happiness
Clever people will recognize and tolerate nothing but cleverness.
Amiel, Henri Frederic
Intelligence and Intellectuals
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.
Amiel, Henri Frederic
Passion
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.
Amiel, Henri Frederic
Intervention
The fire which enlightens is the same fire which consumes.
Amiel, Henri Frederic
Passion
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.
Amiel, Henri Frederic
Life and Living
Women wish to be loved not because they are pretty, or good, or well bred, or graceful, or intelligent, but because they are themselves.
Amiel, Henri Frederic
Love
Our duty is to be useful, not according to our desires, but according to our powers.
Amiel, Henri Frederic
Power
In every loving woman there is a priestess of the past -- a pious guardian of some affection, of which the object has disappeared.
Amiel, Henri Frederic
Lovers
To marry unequally is to suffer equally.
Amiel, Henri Frederic
Marriage
Materialism coarsens and petrifies everything, making everything vulgar, and every truth false.
Amiel, Henri Frederic
Materialism
Every life is a profession of faith, and exercises an inevitable and silent influence.
Amiel, Henri Frederic
Influence
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.
Amiel, Henri Frederic
Philosophers and Philosophy
Sympathy is the first condition of criticism.
Amiel, Henri Frederic
Sympathy
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.
Amiel, Henri Frederic
Obscurity
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.
Amiel, Henri Frederic
Music
The man who insists upon seeing with perfect clearness before he decides, never decides. Accept life, and you must accept regret.
Amiel, Henri Frederic
Perfection
Order is a great person s need and their true well being.
Amiel, Henri Frederic
Order
Order is power.
Amiel, Henri Frederic
Order
Society lives by faith, and develops by science.
Amiel, Henri Frederic
Society
To depersonalize man is the dominant drift of our times.
Amiel, Henri Frederic
Respectability
There is no respect for others without humility in one s self.
Amiel, Henri Frederic
Respectability
We are never more discontented with others than when we are discontented with ourselves.
Amiel, Henri Frederic
Relationships
If nationality is consent, the state is compulsion.
Amiel, Henri Frederic
State
The only substance properly so called is the soul.
Amiel, Henri Frederic
Soul
Tears are the symbol of the inability of the soul to restrain its emotion and retain its self command.
Amiel, Henri Frederic
Tears
He who asks of life nothing but the improvement of his own nature is less liable than anyone else to miss and waste life.
Amiel, Henri Frederic
Self-improvement
Thought is a kind of opium; it can intoxicate us, while still broad awake; it can make transparent the mountains and everything that exists.
Amiel, Henri Frederic
Thoughts and Thinking
Uncertainty is the refuge of hope.
Amiel, Henri Frederic
Uncertainty
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.
Amiel, Henri Frederic
Teachers and Teaching
Our true history is scarcely ever deciphered by others. The chief part of the drama is a monologue, or rather an intimate debate between God, our conscience, and ourselves. Tears, grieves, depressions, disappointments, irritations, good and evil thoughts, decisions, uncertainties, deliberations --all these belong to our secret, and are almost all incommunicable and intransmissible, even when we try to speak of them, and even when we write them down.
Amiel, Henri Frederic
Secrets
To shun one s cross is to make it heavier.
Amiel, Henri Frederic
Responsibility
Sacrifice, which is the passion of great souls, has never been the law of societies.
Amiel, Henri Frederic
Sacrifice
Sacrifice still exists everywhere, and everywhere the elect of each generation suffers for the salvation of the rest.
Amiel, Henri Frederic
Sacrifice
Self-interest is but the survival of the animal in us. Humanity only begins for man with self-surrender.
Amiel, Henri Frederic
Self-interest
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 a gangrene, of a storm, of a revolution.
Amiel, Henri Frederic
Things and Little Things
We become actors without realizing it, and actors without wanting to.
Amiel, Henri Frederic
Acting and Actors
To know how to grow old is the master work of wisdom, and one of the most difficult chapters in the great art of living.
Amiel, Henri Frederic
Age and Aging
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.
Amiel, Henri Frederic
Belief
Thankfulness is the beginning of gratitude. Gratitude is the completion of thankfulness. Thankfulness may consist merely of words. Gratitude is shown in acts.
Amiel, Henri Frederic
Appreciation
Analysis kills spontaneity. The grain once ground into flour springs and germinates no more.
Amiel, Henri Frederic
Analysis
Action is coarsened thought; thought becomes concrete, obscure, and unconscious.
Amiel, Henri Frederic
Action
Action and faith enslave thought, both of them in order not be troubled or inconvenienced by reflection, criticism, and doubt.
Amiel, Henri Frederic
Action
For purposes of action nothing is more useful than narrowness of thought combined with energy of will.
Amiel, Henri Frederic
Action
Will localizes us; thought universalizes us.
Amiel, Henri Frederic
Will and Will Power