Henri-Frédéric Amiel Quotes

  

“To know how to suggest is the art of teaching.”
― Henri Frederic Amiel

“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.”
― Henri-Frederic Amiel, Amiel's Journal

“Destiny has two ways of crushing us - by refusing our wishes and by fulfilling them.”
― Henri F. Amiel

“Learn to... be what you are, and learn to resign with a good grace all that you are not. ”
― Henri Frederic Amiel

“The man who has no inner life is the slave of his surroundings.”
― Henri Frédéric Amiel, Amiel's Journal

“A belief is not true because it is useful”
― Henri-Frédéric Amiel

“Let mystery have its place in you; do not be always turning up your whole soil with the plowshare of self-examination, but leave a little fallow corner in your heart ready for any seed the winds may bring, and reserve a nook of shadow for the passing bird; keep a place in your heart for the unexpected guests, an altar for the unknown God. Then if a bird sing among your branches, do not be too eager to tame it. If you are conscious of something new - thought or feeling, wakening in the depths of your being - do not be in a hurry to let in light upon it, to look at it; let the springing germ have the protection of being forgotten, hedge it round with quiet, and do not break in upon its darkness.”
― Henri-Frédéric Amiel, Amiel's Journal

“Women wish to be loved not because they are pretty, or good, or well bred, or graceful, or intelligent, but because they are themselves.”
― Henri Frédéric Amiel

“You desire to know the art of living, my friend? It is contained in one phrase: make use of suffering.”
― Henri-Frédéric Amiel

“The man who insists upon seeing with perfect clearness before he decides, never decides. Accept life, and you must accept regret.”
― Henri Frédéric Amiel

“It is not what he has, nor even what he does, which directly expresses the worth of a man, but what he is.”
― Henri-Frédéric Amiel

“all appears to change when we change”
― Henri-Frédéric Amiel

“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.”
― Henri-Frédéric Amiel

“At the bottom of the modern man there is always a great thirst for self-forgetfulness, self-distraction; he has a secret horror of all which makes him feel his own littleness; the eternal, the infinite, perfection, therefore scare and terrify him. He wishes to approve himself, to admire and congratulate himself; and therefore he turns away from all those problems and abysses which might recall to him his own nothingness.”
― Henri-Frédéric Amiel, Amiel's Journal

“He who floats with the current, who does not guide himself according to higher principles, who has no ideal, no convictions – such a man is a mere article of the worlds furniture – a thing moved, instead of a living and moving being – an echo, not a voice.”
― Henri Frederic Amiel

“What we do not understand we have no right to judge”
― Henri Frederic Amiel

“Work while you have the light. You are responsible for the talent that has been entrusted to you.”
― Henri Frédéric Amiel

“I'm not interested in age. People who tell me their age are silly. You're as old as you feel.”
― Henri Frederic Amiel

“Our duty is to be useful, not according to our desires but according to our powers.”
― Henri-Frédéric Amiel

“Conquering any difficulty always gives one a secret joy, for it means pushing back a boundary line and adding to one's liberty.”
― Henri Frédéric Amiel

“Time is but the space between our memories; as soon as we cease to perceive this space, time has disappeared.”
― Henri-Frédéric Amiel, Amiel's Journal

“Thankfulness is the beginning of gratitude. Gratitude is the completion of thankfulness. Thankfulness may consist merely of words. Gratitude is shown in acts.”
―   Henri Frederic Amiel

 

“Any landscape is a condition of the spirit.”
― Henri Frederic Amiel

“I begin to realize that my memory is a great catacomb, and that below my actual standing-ground there is layer after layer of historical ashes.
Is the life of mind something like that of great trees of immemorial growth? Is the living layer of consciousness super-imposed upon hundreds of dead layers? Dead? No doubt this is too much to say, but still, when memory is slack the past becomes almost as though it had never been. To remember that we did know once is not a sign of possession but a sign of loss; it is like the number of an engraving which is no longer on its nail, the title of a volume no longer to be found on its shelf. My mind is the empty frame of a thousand vanished images.”
― Henri-Frédéric Amiel, Amiel's Journal, Vol 1: The Journal Intime of Henri-Frederic Amiel

“Music is harmony, harmony is perfection, perfection is our dream, and our dream is heaven. ”
― Henri Frederic Amiel

“What is it which has always come between real life and me? What glass screen has, as it were, interposed itself between me and the enjoyment, the possession, the contact of things, leaving me only the role of the looker-on?”
― Henri-Frédéric Amiel, Amiel's Journal

“Charm is the quality in others that makes us more satisfied with ourselves.”
― Henri-Frédéric Amiel