Henri Frederic Amiel Quotes

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.

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

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.

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

Mozart has the classic purity of light and the blue ocean; Beethoven the romantic grandeur which belongs to the storms of air and sea, and while the soul of Mozart seems to dwell on the ethereal peaks of Olympus, that of Beethoven climbs shuddering the storm-beaten sides of a Sinai. Blessed be they both! Each represents a moment of the ideal life, each does us good. Our love is due to both.

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.

In every loving woman there is a priestess of the past

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

Any landscape is a condition of the spirit.

Learn to limit yourself; to content yourself with some definite work; dare to be what you are and learn to resign with a good grace all that you are not; and to believe in your own individuality.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

A woman is sometimes fugitive, irrational, indeterminable, illogical and contradictory. A great deal of forbearance ought to be shown her, and a good deal of prudence exercised with regard to her, for she may bring about innumerable evils without knowing it. Capable of all kinds of devotion, and of all kinds of treason, monster incomprehensible, raised to the second power, she is at once the delight and the terror of man.

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

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

What we do not understand we have no right to judge

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

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

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.

Love is like swallowing hot chocolate before it has cooled off. It takes you by surprise at first, but keeps you warm for a long time.

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.

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

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

To know how to suggest is the art of teaching.

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

Life is but a daily oscillation between revolt and submission.

To feel keenly the poetry of a morning's roses, one has to have just escaped from the claws of this vulture which we call sickness.

We are always making God our accomplice, that so we may legalize our own iniquities. Every successful massacre is consecrated by a Te Deum, and the clergy have never been wanting in benedictions for any victorious enormity.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

The ideal doctor would be a man endowed with profound knowledge of life and of the soul, intuitively divining any suffering or disorder of whatever kind, and restoring peace by his mere presence.

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

Will localizes us, thought universalizes us.