Henri-Frédéric Amiel Quotes

Any landscape is a condition of the spirit.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
Almost everything comes from almost nothing.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
The great artist and thinker are the simplifiers.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
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.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
Learn to ... be what you are and learn to resign with a good grace all that you are not.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
Analysis kills spontaneity. The grain once ground into flour springs and germinates no more.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
A thousand things advance nine hundred and ninety-nine retreat that is progress.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
Conquering any difficulty always gives one a secret joy for it means pushing back a boundary-line and adding to one's liberty.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
Man becomes man only by the intelligence but he is man only by the heart.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
To learn new habits is everything for it is to reach the substance of life. Life is but a tissue of habits.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
Time wasted is a theft from God.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
Analysis kills spontaneity. The grain once ground into flour springs and germinates no more.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
Learn to ... be what you are and learn to resign with a good grace all that you are not.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
A thousand things advance nine hundred and ninety-nine retreat that is progress.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
Conquering any difficulty always gives one a secret joy for it means pushing back a boundary-line and adding to one's liberty.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
Man becomes man only by the intelligence but he is man only by the heart.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
To learn new habits is everything for it is to reach the substance of life. Life is but a tissue of habits.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
Time wasted is a theft from God.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
The man who has no inner life is the slave of his surroundings.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
A man only understands what is akin to something already existing in himself.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
Man is a passion which brings a will into play which works an intelligence.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
Man becomes man only by his intelligence but he is man only by his heart.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
Analysis kills spontaneity. The grain once ground into flour germinates no more.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
Unconsciousness spontaneity instinct ... hold us to the earth and dictate the relatively good and useful.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
To live we must conquer incessantly we must have the courage to be happy.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
For purposes of action nothing is more useful than narrowness of thought combined with energy of will.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
How then find the courage for action?... By accepting the human condition more simply and candidly by dreading troubles less calculating less hoping more.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
Doing easily what others find is difficult is talent doing what is impossible for talent is genius.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
To win true peace a man needs to feel himself directed pardoned and sustained by a supreme power to feel himself in the right road at the point where God would have him be-in order with God and the universe. This faith gives strength and calm.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
Faith is a certitude without proofs ... a sentiment for it is a hope it is an instinct for it precedes all outward instruction.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
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.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
The man who insists upon seeing with perfect clearness before he decides never decides.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
A man must be able to cut a knot for everything cannot be untied.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
Analysis kills spontaneity. The grain once ground into flour springs and germinates no more.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
How then find the courage for action? By slipping a little into unconsciousness spontaneity instinct which holds one to the earth and dictates the relatively good and useful. ... By accepting the human condition more simply and candidly by dreading troubles less calculating less hoping more.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
We must have the courage to be happy.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
Every life is a possession of faith and exercises an inevitable and silent propaganda.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
Cleverness is serviceable for everything sufficient for nothing.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
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.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
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.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
For purposes of action nothing is more useful than narrowness of thought combined with energy of will.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
To repel one's cross is to make it heavier.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
A journal takes the place of a confidant, that is, of friend or wife; it becomes a substitute for production, a substitute for country and public. It is a grief-cheating device, a mode of escape and withdrawal; but, factotum as it is, though it takes the place of everything, properly speaking it represents nothing at all...
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
Hindoo wisdom long ago regarded the world as the dream of Brahma. Must we hold with Fichte that it is the individual dream of each individual ego? Every fool would then be a cosmogonic poet producing the firework of the universe under the dome of the infinite.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
I'm not interested in age. People who tell me their age are silly. You're as old as you feel.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
Sacrifice still exists everywhere, and everywhere the elect of each generation suffers for the salvation of the rest.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
Thankfulness is the beginning of gratitude. Gratitude is the completion of thankfulness. Thankfulness may consist merely of words. Gratitude is shown in acts.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
Let us never be afraid of innocent joy; God is good and what he does is well done; resign yourself to everything, even happiness; ask for the spirit of sacrifice, of detachment, of renunciation, and above all, for the spirit of joy and gratitude.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
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.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
Life is short and we have never too much time for gladdening the hearts of those who are traveling the dark journey with us. Oh, be swift to love, make haste to be kind.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
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
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
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.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
Our duty is to be useful, not according to our desires but according to our powers.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
I begin to realize that my memory is a great catacomb, and that below my actual standing-ground there is layer after layer of historical ashes. Is the life of mind something like that of great trees of immemorial growth? Is the living layer of consciousness super-imposed upon hundreds of dead layers? Dead? No doubt this is too much to say, but still, when memory is slack the past becomes almost as though it had never been. To remember that we did know once is not a sign of possession but a sign of loss; it is like the number of an engraving which is no longer on its nail, the title of a volume no longer to be found on its shelf. My mind is the empty frame of a thousand vanished images.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
Philosophy means the complete liberty of the mind.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
Conquering any difficulty always gives one a secret joy, for it means pushing back a boundary line and adding to one's liberty.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
To know how to suggest is the art of teaching.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
A belief is not true because it is useful
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
The stationary condition is the beginning of the end
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
Uncertainty is the refuge of hope.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel