Henri Frederic Amiel Quotes

A thousand things advance; nine hundred and ninety nine retreat; That is progress.

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

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

To marry unequally is to suffer equally.

Kindness is gladdening the hearts of those who are traveling the dark journey with us.

all appears to change when we change

Faith is certitude without proofs ... Faith is a sentiment, for it is a hope; it is an instinct, for it precedes all outward instruction.

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

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

To be always ready a man must be able to cut a knot, for everything cannot be untied.

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

The fire which enlightens is the same fire which consumes.

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

If ignorance and passion are the foes of popular morality, it must be confessed that moral indifference is the malady of the cultivated classes.

Emancipation from error is the condition of real knowledge.

Almost everything comes from almost nothing.

To depersonalize man is the dominant drift of our times.

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

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.

A belief is not true because it is useful

War is a brutal and fierce means of pacification; it means the suppression of resistance by the destruction or enslavement of the conquered.

The stationary condition is the beginning of the end

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

Common sense is calculation applied to life.

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

Time wasted is a theft from God.

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

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

We are always making God our accomplice so that we may legalize our own inequities.

Philosophy starts with doubt and loves only truth.

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

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.

Sadness takes up the pen more readily than joy.

The test of every religious, political, or educational system is the men which it forms

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

To learn new habits is everything, for it is to reach the substance of life. Life is but a tissue of habits.

Life alone can rekindle life.

Spite is anger which is afraid to show itself, it is an impotent fury conscious of its impotence.

Do not despise your situation; in it you must act, suffer, and conquer. From every point on earth we are equally near to heaven and to the infinite.

It is not what he has, nor even what he does, which directly expresses the worth of a man, but what he is.

What we do not understand we have no right to judge

Before crime is committed conscience must be corrupted, and every bad man who succeeds in reaching a high point of wickedness begins with this.

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

A philosopher is aspires to explain away all mysteries, to dissolve them into light.

The laws of animality govern almost the whole of history.

The unfinished is nothing.

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

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

Every living being seeks instinctively to complete itself.

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

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

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

Only evil grows of itself, while for goodness we want effort and courage.

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

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

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

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

Life is but a daily oscillation between revolt and submission.

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

Clever people will recognize and tolerate nothing but cleverness.

True love is that which ennobles the personality, fortifies the heart, and sanctifies the existence.

Doubt of the reality of love ends by making us doubt everything.

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

Hope is only the love of life.

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

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

Society rests upon conscience, not upon science.

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

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

The man who has no inner life is the slave of his surroundings.

We only understand that which already is within us.

Righteous ends, thus approved, absolve of guilt the most violent means.

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

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

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

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

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

When everything has its proper place in our minds, we are able to stand in equilibrium with the rest of the world.

Doubt is the accomplice of tyranny.

Our greatest illusion is to believe that we are what we think ourselves to be.

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

Philosophy means the complete liberty of the mind.

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

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

Great men are the real men, in them nature has succeeded.

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.

About Jesus we must believe no one but himself.

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

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

A microscopic phantom of the universe; this is all that we are able to be.

Man is a passion which brings a will into play, which works an intelligence.

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

Sympathy is the first condition of criticism.

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.

Dreams are excursions into the limbo of things, a semi-deliverance from the human prison.

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

Unconsciousness, spontaneity, instinct ... hold us to the earth and dictate the relatively good and useful.

The immense majority of our species are candidates for humanity, and nothing more.

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

Any landscape is a condition of the spirit.