Best 227 quotes of Henri Frederic Amiel on MyQuotes

Henri Frederic Amiel

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    Henri Frederic Amiel

    A belief is not true simply because it is useful.

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    Henri Frederic Amiel

    Accept life, and you must accept regret.

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    Henri Frederic Amiel

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

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    Henri Frederic Amiel

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

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    Henri Frederic Amiel

    A journal takes the place of a confidant, that is, of friend or wife; it becomes a substitute for production, a substitute for country and public. It is a grief-cheating device, a mode of escape and withdrawal; but, factotum as it is, though it takes the place of everything, properly speaking it represents nothing at all.

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    Henri Frederic Amiel

    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.

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    Henri Frederic Amiel

    A musical theme once exhausted, finds its due refuge and repose in silence.

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    Henri Frederic Amiel

    A man without passion is only a latent force, only a possibility, like a stone waiting for the blow from the iron to give forth sparks.

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    Henri Frederic Amiel

    A microscopic phantom of the universe; this is all that we are able to be.

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    Henri Frederic Amiel

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

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    Henri Frederic Amiel

    Analysis kills spontaneity.

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    Henri Frederic Amiel

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

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    Henri Frederic Amiel

    An error is the more dangerous in proportion to the degree of truth which it contains.

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    Henri Frederic Amiel

    Any landscape is a condition of the spirit.

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    Henri Frederic Amiel

    Are we not all shipwrecked,...condemned to death?... However impatient our neighbours make us, however much indignation our race arouses, we are all bound together, and the companions of a chain-gang have everything to lose by mutual insults.

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    Henri Frederic Amiel

    At bottom, everything depends upon the presence or absence of one single element in the soul - HOPE

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    Henri Frederic Amiel

    At bottom there is but one subject of study: the forms and metamorphoses of mind. All other subjects may be reduced to that; all other studies bring us back to this study.

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    Henri Frederic Amiel

    A thousand things advance; nine hundred and ninety nine retreat; That is progress.

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    Henri Frederic Amiel

    At the bottom of the modern man there is always a great thirst for self-forgetfulness, self-distraction . . . and therefore he turns away from all those problems and abysses which might recall to him his own nothingness.

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    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.

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    Henri Frederic Amiel

    Before crime is committed conscience must be corrupted, and every bad man who succeeds in reaching a high point of wickedness begins with this.

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    Henri Frederic Amiel

    Before giving advice we must have secured its acceptance, or, rather, have made it desired.

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    Henri Frederic Amiel

    Blessed be childhood, which brings down something of heaven into the midst of our rough earthliness.

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    Henri Frederic Amiel

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

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    Henri Frederic Amiel

    Christianity, if it is to triumph over pantheism, must absorb it. To our pusillanimous eyes Jesus would have borne the marks of a hateful pantheism, for he confirmed the Biblical phrase "ye are gods," and so would St. Paul, who tells us that we are of "the race of God." Our century wants a new theology - that is to say, a more profound explanation of the nature of Christ and of the light which it flashes upon heaven and upon humanity.

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    Henri Frederic Amiel

    Civilization is first of all a moral thing. Without truth, respect for duty, love of neighbor, and virtue, everything is destroyed. The morality of a society is alone the basis of civilization.

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    Henri Frederic Amiel

    Cleverness is serviceable for everything, sufficient for nothing.

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    Henri Frederic Amiel

    Clever people will recognize and tolerate nothing but cleverness.

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    Henri Frederic Amiel

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

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    Henri Frederic Amiel

    Composition is a process of combination, in which thought puts together complementary truths, and talent fuses into harmony the most contrary qualities of style. So that there is no composition without effort, without pain even, as in all bringing forth. The reward is the giving birth to something living--something, that is to say, which, by a kind of magic, makes a living unity out of such opposed attributes as orderliness and spontaneity, thought and imagination, solidity and charm.

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    Henri Frederic Amiel

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

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    Henri Frederic Amiel

    Criticism is above all a gift, an intuition, a matter of tact and flair; it cannot be taught or demonstrated--it is an art. Critical genius means an aptitude for discerning truth under appearances or in disguises which conceal it; for discovering it in spite of the errors of testimony, the frauds of tradition, the dust of time, the loss or alteration of texts. It is the sagacity of the hunter whom nothing deceives for long, and whom no ruse can throw off the trail.

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    Henri Frederic Amiel

    Criticism is above all a gift, an intuition, a matter of tact and flair; it cannot be taught or demonstrated--it is an art.

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    Henri Frederic Amiel

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

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    Henri Frederic Amiel

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

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    Henri Frederic Amiel

    Do not despise your situation; in it you must act, suffer, and conquer. From every point on earth we are equally near to heaven and to the infinite.

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    Henri Frederic Amiel

    Doubt is the accomplice of tyranny.

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    Henri Frederic Amiel

    Doubt of the reality of love ends by making us doubt everything.

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    Henri Frederic Amiel

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

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    Henri Frederic Amiel

    Each bud flowers but once and each flower has but its minute of perfect beauty; so, in the garden of the soul each feeling has, as it were, its flowering instant, its one and only moment of expansive grace and radiant kingship.

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    Henri Frederic Amiel

    Emancipation from error is the condition of real knowledge.

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    Henri Frederic Amiel

    Every landscape is, as it were, a state of the soul, and whoever penetrates into both is astonished to find how much likeness there is in each detail.

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    Henri Frederic Amiel

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

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    Henri Frederic Amiel

    Every life is a profession of faith.

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    Henri Frederic Amiel

    Every man is a priest, even involuntarily; his conduct is an unspoken sermon, which is forever preaching to others.

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    Henri Frederic Amiel

    Every situation is an equilibrium of forces; every life is a struggle between opposing forces working within the limits of a certain equilibrium

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    Henri Frederic Amiel

    Everything which is, is thought, but not conscious and individual thought. The human intelligence is but the consciousness of being. It is what I have formulated before: Everything is a symbol of a symbol, and a symbol of what? Of mind.

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    Henri Frederic Amiel

    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.

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    Henri Frederic Amiel

    Faith is certitude without proofs ... Faith is a sentiment, for it is a hope; it is an instinct, for it precedes all outward instruction.

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    Henri Frederic Amiel

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