Henri Frederic Amiel Quotes (125 Quotes)

Democracy means despair of finding any heroes to govern you, and contented putting up with the want of them

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. . .

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.

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

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

Nothing is more characteristic of a man than the manner in which he behaves toward fools.

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

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

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

Cleverness is serviceable for everything, sufficient for nothing.

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

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

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.

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

To understand is to possess the thing understood, first by sympathy and then by intelligence.

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.

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

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

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

Health is the first of all liberties, and happiness gives us the energy which is the basis of health.

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

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

He who is silent is forgotten he who does not advance falls back he who stops is overwhelmed out distanced, crushed he who ceases t grow becomes smaller he who leaves off, gives up the condition of standing still is the beginning of the end.

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

Obstinacy is will asserting itself without being able to justify itself. It is persistence without a reasonable motive. It is the tenacity of self-love substituted for that of reason and conscience.

To depersonalize man is the dominant drift of our times.

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

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.

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

An error is the more dangerous the more truth it contains.

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

The best path through life is the highway.

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

Society lives by faith, and develops by science.

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

Common sense is the measure of the possible.

Uncertainty is the refuge of hope.

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.

We only understand that which already within us.

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

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.

True humility is contentment.

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

It is dangerous to abandon one's self to the luxury of grief it deprives one of courage and even of the wish for recovery.

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

The man who insists on seeing with perfect clearness before he decides, never decides.

The only substance properly so called is the soul.

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

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

Common sense is calculation applied to life.