Henri Frederic Amiel Quotes (125 Quotes)

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

Sympathy is the first condition of criticism.

Order means light and peace, inward liberty and free command over one's self order is power.

A thousand things advance nine hundred and ninety-nine retreat that is progress.

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

Clever people will recognize and tolerate nothing but cleverness.

A man only understands what is akin to something already existing in himself.

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

Any landscape is a condition of the spirit.

I do not deny the rights of democracy, but I have no illusions as to the uses that will be made of those rights so long as wisdom is rare and pride abundant

Liberty, equality - bad principles The only true principle for humanity is justice and justice to the feeble is protection and kindness.

Whenever conscience speaks with a divided, uncertain, and disputed voice, it is not the voice of God. Descend still deeper into yourself, until you hear nothing but a clear, undivided voice, a voice which does away with doubt and brings with it persuasion, light, and serenity.

Order is power.

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

To know how to suggest is the art of teaching.

To curse grief is easier than to bless it, but to do so is to fall back into the point of view of the earthly, the carnal, the natural man. By what has Christianity subdued the world if not by the apotheosis of grief, by its marvelous transmutation of suf.

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

The great artist is the simplifier.

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.

Life is short. 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.

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

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

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

The obscure only exists that it may cease to exist. In it lies the opportunity of all victory and all progress. Whether it call itself fatality, death, night, or matter, it is the pedestal of life, of light, of liberty and the spirit. For it represents resistance -- that is to say, the fulcrum of all activity, the occasion for its development and its triumph.