Henri Frederic Amiel Quotations

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

There is no respect for others without humility in one's self.

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

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.

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.

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

Cleverness is serviceable for everything, sufficient for nothing.

I'm not interested in age. People who tell me their age are silly. You're as old as you feel.

Doing easily what others find difficult is talent; doing what is impossible for talent is genius.

Truth is not only violated by falsehood; it may be equally outraged by silence.

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

Everything you need for better future and success has already been written. And guess what? All you have to do is go to the library.

The best path through life is the highway.

Thankfulness is the beginning of gratitude. Gratitude is the completion of thankfulness. Thankfulness may consist merely of words. Gratitude is shown in acts.

The man who has no inner-life is a slave to his surroundings.

Clever people will recognize and tolerate nothing but cleverness.

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

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

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

We only understand that which already is within us.

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.

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.

The fire which enlightens is the same fire which consumes.

In every loving woman there is a priestess of the past - a pious guardian of some affection, of which the object has disappeared.

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

Society lives by faith, and develops by science.

Women wish to be loved without a why or a wherefore; not because they are pretty, or good, or well-bred, or graceful, or intelligent, but because they are themselves.

Every life is a profession of faith, and exercises an inevitable and silent influence.

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

An error is the more dangerous in proportion to the degree of truth which it contains.

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

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

Any landscape is a condition of the spirit.

Pure truth cannot be assimilated by the crowd; it must be communicated by contagion.

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

Charm is the quality in others that makes us more satisfied with ourselves.

Common sense is the measure of the possible; it is composed of experience and prevision; it is calculation applied to life.

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.

Thought is a kind of opium; it can intoxicate us, while still broad awake; it can make transparent the mountains and everything that exists.

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

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.

Action and faith enslave thought, both of them in order not be troubled or inconvenienced by reflection, criticism, and doubt.

Our duty is to be useful, not according to our desires but according to our powers.

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

Conquering any difficulty always gives one a secret joy, for it means pushing back a boundary-line and adding to one's liberty.

It is not what he had, or even what he does which expresses the worth of a man, but what he is.

Woman is the salvation or the destruction of the family. She carries its destiny in the folds of her mantle.

The test of every religious, political, or educational system is the man that it forms.

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.

Work while you have the light. You are responsible for the talent that has been entrusted to you.

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.

So long as a person is capable of self-renewal they are a living being.

Order is a great person's need and their true well being.

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

Sacrifice, which is the passion of great souls, has never been the law of societies.

Action is coarsened thought; thought becomes concrete, obscure, and unconscious.

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

The only substance properly so called is the soul.

Sacrifice still exists everywhere, and everywhere the elect of each generation suffers for the salvation of the rest.

If nationality is consent, the state is compulsion.

Let mystery have its place in you; do not be always turning up your whole soil with the ploughshare of self-examination, but leave a little fallow corner in your heart ready for any seed the winds may bring...

Life is short and we never have enough time for gladdening the hearts of those who travel the way with us. Oh, be swift to love! Make haste to be kind.

Life is short. Be swift to love! Make haste to be kind!

We must have the courage to be happy

There is no curing a sick man who believes himself in health

It is not what he had, or even what he does, which expresses the worth of a man, but what he is.

Time and space are fragments of the infinite for the use of the finite creatures.

Wisdom consists in rising superior both to madness and to common sense, and in lending oneself to the universal delusion without becoming its dupe.

We only understand that which already within us.

Women wish to be loved not because they are pretty, or good, or well bred, or graceful, or intelligent, but because they are themselves.

Every life is a profession of faith and exercises an inevitable and silent influence.

The thirst for truth is not a French passion

Action is only coarsened thought; thought becomes concrete, obscure, and unconscious.

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

A lively, disinterested, persistent liking for truth is extraordinarily rare. Action and faith enslave thought, both of them in order not to be troubled or inconvenienced by reflection, criticism or doubt.

Tell me what you think you are and I will tell you what you are not

Our duty is to be useful, not according to our desires, but according to our powers.

Doing easily what others find difficult is talent; doing what is impossible for others is genius.

So as long as a person is capable of self-renewal, they are a living being.

Its way of suffering is the witness which a soul bares to itself.

In every loving woman there is a priestess of the past -- a pious guardian of some affection, of which the object has disappeared.

A man must be able to cut a knot, for everything cannot be untied; he must know how to disengage what is essential from the detail in which it is enwrapped, for everything cannot be equally considered; in a word, he must be able to simplify his duties, his business and his life.

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

You desire to know the art of living, my friend? It is contained in one phrase: make use of suffering.

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

So long as a person is capable of self-renewal they are a living being. -Henri

To do what is impossible for talent is the mark of genius.

Let mystery have its place in you ; do not be always turning up your whole soil with the ploughshare of self-examination, but leave a little fallow corner in your heart ready for any seed the winds may bring ...

[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.

Uncertainty is the refuge of hope.

Almost everything comes from almost nothing.

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

Everything which is, is thought, but not conscious and individual thought. The human intelligence is but the consciousness of being. It is what I have formulated before: Everything is a symbol of a symbol, and a symbol of what? of mind.

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

To do easily what is difficult for others is the mark of talent.

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.

Time and space are fragments of the infinite for the use of finite creatures.

Will localizes us, thought universalizes us.

We become actors without realizing it, and actors without wanting to.

To marry unequally is to suffer equally.