Henri Frederic Amiel Quotes
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A microscopic phantom of the universe; this is all that we are able to be.
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Happiness does away with ugliness, and even makes the beauty of beauty.
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There is no curing a sick man who believes himself to be in health.
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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 My consciousness is withdrawn into itself; I hear my heart beating, and my life passing.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.
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Our life is nothing, it is true, but our life is divine. A breath of nature annihilates us, but we surpass nature in penetrating far beyond her vast phantasmagoria to the changeless and the eternal.
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The only substance properly so called is the soul.
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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, the power of proselytism.
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Every man is a priest, even involuntarily; his conduct is an unspoken sermon, which is forever preaching to others.
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To be always ready a man must be able to cut a knot, for everything cannot be untied.
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Blessed be childhood, which brings down something of heaven into the midst of our rough earthliness.
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So long as a person is capable of self-renewal they are a living being. -Henri
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The man who has no inner-life is a slave to his surroundings.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Learn to limit yourself; to content yourself with some definite work; 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.
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At the bottom of the modern man there is always a great thirst for self-forgetfulness, self-distraction . . . and therefore he turns away from all those problems and abysses which might recall to him his own nothingness.
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In every loving woman there is a priestess of the past
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Accept life, and you must accept regret.
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There is no respect for others without humility in one's self.
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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.
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Before crime is committed conscience must be corrupted, and every bad man who succeeds in reaching a high point of wickedness begins with this.
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Nature does at least what she can to translate into visible form the wealth of the creative formula. By the vastness of the abysses into which she penetrates, in the effort--the unsuccessful effort--to house and contain the eternal thought, we may measure the greatness of the divine mind.
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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.
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The man who insists upon seeing with perfect clearness before he decides, never decides. Accept life, and you must accept regret.
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The ideal, after all, is true than the real: for the ideal is the eternal element in perishable things.
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Time and space are fragments of the infinite for the use of finite creatures.
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Our greatest illusion is to believe that we are what we think ourselves to be.
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Thankfulness is the beginning of gratitude. Gratitude is the completion of thankfulness. Thankfulness may consist merely of words. Gratitude is shown in acts.
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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.
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