Famous Henri Frédéric Amiel Quotations

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"To marry unequally is to suffer equally."
by Henri Frederic Amiel
"Great men are true men, the men in whom nature has succeeded. They are not extraordinary -- they are in the true order. It is the other species of men who are not what they ought to be."
by Henri Frederic 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."
by Henri Frederic Amiel
"Analysis kills spontaneity. The grain once ground into flour springs and germinates no more."
by Henri Frederic Amiel
"Woman is the salvation or the destruction of the family. She carries its destiny in the folds of her mantle."
by Henri-Frederic Amiel
"Charm is the quality in others that makes us more satisfied with ourselves."
by Henri-Frédéric Amiel
"...happiness gives us the energy which is the basis of health."
by Henri-Frédéric Amiel
"All appears to change when we change."
by Henri-Frédéric Amiel
"An error is the more dangerous the more truth it contains."
by Henri-Frédéric Amiel
"Analysis kills spontaneity."
by Henri-Frederic Amiel
"Any landscape is a condition of the spirit."
by Henri Frederic Amiel
"Great men are true men, the men in whom nature has succeeded. They are not extraordinary - they are in the true order. It is the other species of men who are not what they ought to be."
by Henri-Frederic Amiel
"Health is the first of all liberties, and happiness gives us the energy which is the basis of health."
by Henri Frederic Amiel
"Hope is only the love of life."
by Henri-Frédéric Amiel
"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."
by Henri Frederic Amiel
"Learn to limit yourself, to content yourself with some definite thing, and 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."
by Henri-Frédéric Amiel
"Liberty, equality - bad principles! The only true principle for humanity is justice; and justice to the feeble is protection and kindness."
by Henri-Frédéric Amiel
"Oh, order! Material order, intellectual order, moral order! What a comfort and strength, and what an economy! To know where we are going and what we want; that is order. To keep ones word, to do the right thing, and at the right time: more order. To have everything under ones hand, to put ones whole army through its manoeuvres, to work with all ones resources: still order. To discipline ones habits and efforts and wishes, to organize ones life and distribute ones time, to measure ones duties and assert ones rights, to put ones capital and resources, ones talents and opportunities to profit: again and always order. Order is light, peace, inner freedom, self-determination: it is power. To conceive order, to return to order, to realize order in oneself, around oneself, by means of oneself, this is aesthetic and moral beauty, it is well-being, it is what ought to be."
by Henri Frederic Amiel
"Tell me what you think you are and I will tell you what you are not"
by Henri Frederic Amiel
"The man who insists upon seeing with perfect clearness before he decides, never decides. Accept life, and you must accept regret."
by Henri-Frédéric Amiel (1856)
"The man who insists on seeing with perfect clearness before he decides, never decides."
by Henri-Frédéric Amiel
"The test of every religious, political, or educational system is the man that it forms."
by Henri-Frédéric Amiel
"Time and space are fragments of the infinite for the use of the finite creatures."
by Henri Frederic Amiel
"To be always ready a man must be able to cut a knot, for everything cannot be untied"
by Henri Frederic Amiel
"To live we must conquer incessantly, we must have the courage to be happy."
by Henri-Frederic Amiel
"Truth is the secret of eloquence and of virtue, the basis of moral authority; it is the highest summit of art and life."
by Henri-Frédéric Amiel
"Truth is not only violated by falsehood; it may be equally outraged by silence."
by Henri Frederic 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"
by Henri Frederic Amiel
"Work while you have the light. You are responsible for the talent that has been entrusted to you."
by Henri-Frédéric Amiel
"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."
by Henri Frederic Amiel
"You desire to know the art of living, my friend? It is contained in one phrase: make use of suffering."
by Henri-Frédéric Amiel
"Action is coarsened thought; thought becomes concrete, obscure, and unconscious."
by Henri Frederic Amiel
"Accept life, and you must accept regret."
by Henri Frederic Amiel
"We become actors without realizing it, and actors without wanting to."
by Henri Frederic Amiel
"Thankfulness is the beginning of gratitude. Gratitude is the completion of thankfulness. Thankfulness may consist merely of words. Gratitude is shown in acts."
by Henri Frederic 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."
by Henri Frederic Amiel
"So long as a person is capable of self-renewal they are a living being."
by Henri Frederic Amiel
"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."
by Henri Frederic Amiel
"Common sense is the measure of the possible; it is composed of experience and prevision; it is calculation applied to life."
by Henri Frederic Amiel
"Pure truth cannot be assimilated by the crowd; it must be communicated by contagion."
by Henri Frederic Amiel
"Materialism coarsens and petrifies everything, making everything vulgar, and every truth false."
by Henri Frederic Amiel
"Tears are the symbol of the inability of the soul to restrain its emotion and retain its self command."
by Henri Frederic Amiel
"Uncertainty is the refuge of hope."
by Henri Frederic Amiel
"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."
by Henri Frederic Amiel
"Mutual respect implies discretion and reserve even in love itself; it means preserving as much liberty as possible to those whose life we share. We must distrust our instinct of intervention, for the desire to make one's own will prevail is often disguised under the mask of solicitude."
by Henri Frederic Amiel
"Cleverness is serviceable for everything, sufficient for nothing."
by Henri Frederic Amiel
"Clever people will recognize and tolerate nothing but cleverness."
by Henri Frederic Amiel
"Women wish to be loved not because they are pretty, or good, or well bred, or graceful, or intelligent, but because they are themselves."
by Henri Frederic Amiel
"An error is the more dangerous in proportion to the degree of truth which it contains."
by Henri Frederic Amiel
"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."
by Henri Frederic Amiel
"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."
by Henri Frederic Amiel
"Order is a great person's need and their true well being."
by Henri Frederic Amiel
"In every loving woman there is a priestess of the past"
by Henri Frederic 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."
by Henri Frederic Amiel
"The fire which enlightens is the same fire which consumes."
by Henri Frederic Amiel
"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; he is less duped than his neighbor by his own nature. He judges more sanely, he sees things as they are. It is in this that his liberty consists -- in the ability to see clearly and soberly, in the power of mental record."
by Henri Frederic Amiel
"He who asks of life nothing but the improvement of his own nature is less liable than anyone else to miss and waste life."
by Henri Frederic Amiel
"To depersonalize man is the dominant drift of our times."
by Henri Frederic Amiel
"There is no respect for others without humility in one's self."
by Henri Frederic Amiel
"To shun one's cross is to make it heavier."
by Henri Frederic Amiel
"Melancholy is at the bottom of everything, just as at the end of all rivers is the sea. Can it be otherwise in a world where nothing lasts, where all that we have loved or shall love must die? Is death, then, the secret of life? The gloom of an eternal mourning enwraps, more or less closely, every serious and thoughtful soul, as night enwraps the universe."
by Henri Frederic Amiel
"Sacrifice still exists everywhere, and everywhere the elect of each generation suffers for the salvation of the rest."
by Henri Frederic Amiel
"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."
by Henri Frederic Amiel
"Self-interest is but the survival of the animal in us. Humanity only begins for man with self-surrender."
by Henri Frederic Amiel
"Society lives by faith, and develops by science."
by Henri Frederic Amiel
"The only substance properly so called is the soul."
by Henri Frederic Amiel
"If nationality is consent, the state is compulsion."
by Henri Frederic Amiel
"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."
by Henri Frederic Amiel
"Sympathy is the first condition of criticism."
by Henri Frederic Amiel
"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."
by Henri Frederic Amiel
"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."
by Henri Frederic Amiel
"Thought is a kind of opium; it can intoxicate us, while still broad awake; it can make transparent the mountains and everything that exists."
by Henri Frederic Amiel
"Will localizes us; thought universalizes us."
by Henri Frederic Amiel
"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."
by Henri Frederic Amiel


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