Amiel, Henri-Frédéric (Henri-Frédéric Amiel)

Action is but coarsened thought - thought become concrete, obscure, and unconscious.
-- Henri-Frédéric Amiel

To adore, to understand, to receive, to feel, to give, to act: there is my law my duty, my happiness, my heaven. Let come what come will�even death.
-- Henri-Frédéric Amiel

It gives liberty and breadth to thought, to learn to judge our own epoch from the point of view of universal history, history from the point of view of geological periods, geology from the point of view of astronomy.
-- Henri-Frédéric 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.
-- Henri-Frédéric Amiel

I have never felt any inward assurance of genius, or any presentiment of glory or of happiness. I have never seen myself in imagination great or famous, or even a husband, a father, an influential citizen. This indifference to the future, this absolute self-distrust, are, no doubt, to be taken as signs. What dreams I have are all vague and indefinite; I ought not to live, for I am now scarcely capable of living.
-- Henri-Frédéric Amiel

Put personal ambition away from you, and then you will find consolation in living or in dying, whatever may happen to you.
-- Henri-Frédéric Amiel

Heroism is the brilliant triumph of the soul over the flesh�that is to say, over fear: fear of poverty, of suffering, of calumny, of sickness, of isolation, and of death. There is no serious piety without heroism. Heroism is the dazzling and glorious concentration of courage.
-- Henri-Frédéric Amiel

The relation of thought to action filled my mind on waking, and I found myself carried toward a bizarre formula, which seems to have something of the night still clinging about it: Action is but coarsened thought; thought become concrete, obscure, and unconscious. It seemed to me that our most trifling actions, of eating, walking, and sleeping, were the condensation of a multitude of truths and thoughts, and that the wealth of ideas involved was in direct proportion to the commonness of the action (as our dreams are the more active, the deeper our sleep). We are hemmed round with mystery, and the greatest mysteries are contained in what we see and do every day. In all spontaneity the work of creation is reproduced in analogy. When the spontaneity is unconscious, you have simple action; when it is conscious, intelligent and moral action.
-- Henri-Frédéric 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.
-- Henri-Frédéric 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. Each star passes but once in the night through the meridian over our heads and shines there but an instant; so, in the heaven of the mind each thought touches its zenith but once, and in that moment all its brilliancy and all its greatness culminate. Artist, poet, or thinker, if you want to fix and immortalize your ideas or your feelings, seize them at this precise and fleeting moment, for it is their highest point. Before it, you have but vague outlines or dim presentiments of them. After it you will have only weakened reminiscence or powerless regret; that moment is the moment of your ideal.
-- Henri-Frédéric Amiel

My privilege is to be spectator of my life drama, to be fully conscious of the tragi-comedy of my own destiny, and, more than that, to be in the secret of the tragi-comic itself, that is to say, to be unable to take my illusions seriously, to see myself, so to speak, from the theater on the stage, or to be like a man looking from beyond the tomb into existence. I feel myself forced to feign a particular interest in my individual part, while all the time I am living in the confidence of the poet who is playing with all these agents which seem so important, and knows all that they are ignorant of.
-- Henri-Frédéric 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.
-- Henri-Frédéric Amiel

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

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

Analysis kills spontaneity. The grain once ground into flour springs and germinates no more.
-- Henri-Frédéric Amiel

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

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

Conquering any difficulty always gives one a secret joy, for it means push back a boundary-line and adding to one`s liberty.
-- Henri-Frédéric Amiel

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

Every life is a profession of faith, and exercises an inevitable and silent influence.
-- Henri-Frédéric 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.
-- Henri-Frédéric Amiel

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

If nationality is consent, the state is compulsion.
-- Henri-Frédéric Amiel

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

It is not what he had, or even what he does which expresses the worth of a man, but what he is.
-- Henri-Frédéric 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.
-- Henri-Frédéric Amiel

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.
-- Henri-Frédéric 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.
-- Henri-Frédéric Amiel

Man becomes man only by his intelligence, but he is man only by his heart.
-- Henri-Frédéric Amiel

Materialism coarsens and petrifies everything, making everything vulgar, and every truth false.
-- Henri-Frédéric 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.
-- Henri-Frédéric 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.
-- Henri-Frédéric Amiel

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

Pure truth cannot be assimilated by the crowd; it must be communicated by contagion.
-- Henri-Frédéric Amiel

Sacrifice still exists everywhere, and everywhere the elect of each generation suffers for the salvation of the rest.
-- Henri-Frédéric Amiel

Sacrifice, which is the passion of great souls, has never been the law of societies.
-- Henri-Frédéric Amiel

Self-interest is but the survival of the animal in us. Humanity only begins for man with self-surrender.
-- Henri-Frédéric Amiel

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

Society lives by faith, and develops by science.
-- Henri-Frédéric Amiel

Sympathy is the first condition of criticism.
-- Henri-Frédéric Amiel

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

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

The fire which enlightens is the same fire which consumes.
-- Henri-Frédéric Amiel

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

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.
-- Henri-Frédéric 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.
-- Henri-Frédéric Amiel

There is no respect for others without humility in one's self.
-- Henri-Frédéric 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.
-- Henri-Frédéric Amiel

To depersonalize man is the dominant drift of our times.
-- Henri-Frédéric 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.
-- Henri-Frédéric Amiel

Doing easily what others find difficult is talent; doing what is impossible for talent is genius.
-- Henri-Frédéric Amiel

To know how to grow old is the master work of wisdom, and one of the most difficult chapters in the great art of living.
-- Henri-Frédéric 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.
-- Henri-Frédéric Amiel

True humility is contentment.
-- Henri-Frédéric Amiel

Uncertainty is the refuge of hope.
-- Henri-Frédéric Amiel

We are never more discontented with others than when we are discontented with ourselves.
-- Henri-Frédéric Amiel

We become actors without realizing it, and actors without wanting to.
-- Henri-Frédéric Amiel

We must dare to be happy, and dare to confess it, regarding ourselves always as the depositories, not as the authors of our own job.
-- Henri-Frédéric Amiel

We only understand that which already within us.
-- Henri-Frédéric Amiel

To adore, to understand, to receive, to feel, to give, to act: there is my law my duty, my happiness, my heaven. Let come what come will�even death.
-- Henri-Frédéric Amiel

It gives liberty and breadth to thought, to learn to judge our own epoch from the point of view of universal history, history from the point of view of geological periods, geology from the point of view of astronomy.
-- Henri-Frédéric 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.
-- Henri-Frédéric 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.
-- Henri-Frédéric Amiel

Will localizes us; thought universalizes us.
-- Henri-Frédéric Amiel

I have never felt any inward assurance of genius, or any presentiment of glory or of happiness. I have never seen myself in imagination great or famous, or even a husband, a father, an influential citizen. This indifference to the future, this absolute self-distrust, are, no doubt, to be taken as signs. What dreams I have are all vague and indefinite; I ought not to live, for I am now scarcely capable of living.
-- Henri-Frédéric 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
-- Henri-Frédéric Amiel

Put personal ambition away from you, and then you will find consolation in living or in dying, whatever may happen to you.
-- Henri-Frédéric Amiel

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

Heroism is the brilliant triumph of the soul over the flesh�that is to say, over fear: fear of poverty, of suffering, of calumny, of sickness, of isolation, and of death. There is no serious piety without heroism. Heroism is the dazzling and glorious concentration of courage.
-- Henri-Frédéric Amiel

The relation of thought to action filled my mind on waking, and I found myself carried toward a bizarre formula, which seems to have something of the night still clinging about it: Action is but coarsened thought; thought become concrete, obscure, and unconscious. It seemed to me that our most trifling actions, of eating, walking, and sleeping, were the condensation of a multitude of truths and thoughts, and that the wealth of ideas involved was in direct proportion to the commonness of the action (as our dreams are the more active, the deeper our sleep). We are hemmed round with mystery, and the greatest mysteries are contained in what we see and do every day. In all spontaneity the work of creation is reproduced in analogy. When the spontaneity is unconscious, you have simple action; when it is conscious, intelligent and moral action.
-- Henri-Frédéric 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.
-- Henri-Frédéric 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. Each star passes but once in the night through the meridian over our heads and shines there but an instant; so, in the heaven of the mind each thought touches its zenith but once, and in that moment all its brilliancy and all its greatness culminate. Artist, poet, or thinker, if you want to fix and immortalize your ideas or your feelings, seize them at this precise and fleeting moment, for it is their highest point. Before it, you have but vague outlines or dim presentiments of them. After it you will have only weakened reminiscence or powerless regret; that moment is the moment of your ideal.
-- Henri-Frédéric Amiel

My privilege is to be spectator of my life drama, to be fully conscious of the tragi-comedy of my own destiny, and, more than that, to be in the secret of the tragi-comic itself, that is to say, to be unable to take my illusions seriously, to see myself, so to speak, from the theater on the stage, or to be like a man looking from beyond the tomb into existence. I feel myself forced to feign a particular interest in my individual part, while all the time I am living in the confidence of the poet who is playing with all these agents which seem so important, and knows all that they are ignorant of.
-- Henri-Frédéric 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.
-- Henri-Frédéric Amiel

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

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

Analysis kills spontaneity. The grain once ground into flour springs and germinates no more.
-- Henri-Frédéric Amiel

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

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

Conquering any difficulty always gives one a secret joy, for it means push back a boundary-line and adding to one`s liberty.
-- Henri-Frédéric Amiel

Destiny has two ways of crushing us
-- Henri-Frédéric Amiel

Every life is a profession of faith, and exercises an inevitable and silent influence.
-- Henri-Frédéric 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.
-- Henri-Frédéric Amiel

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

Great men are true men, the men in whom nature has succeeded. They are not extraordinary
-- Henri-Frédéric 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.
-- 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-Frédéric Amiel

If nationality is consent, the state is compulsion.
-- Henri-Frédéric Amiel

In every loving woman there is a priestess of the past
-- Henri-Frédéric 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.
-- Henri-Frédéric Amiel

It is not what he had, or even what he does which expresses the worth of a man, but what he is.
-- Henri-Frédéric 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.
-- Henri-Frédéric Amiel

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.
-- Henri-Frédéric 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.
-- Henri-Frédéric Amiel

Man becomes man only by his intelligence, but he is man only by his heart.
-- Henri-Frédéric Amiel

Materialism coarsens and petrifies everything, making everything vulgar, and every truth false.
-- Henri-Frédéric 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.
-- Henri-Frédéric 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.
-- Henri-Frédéric Amiel

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

Our systems, perhaps, are nothing more than an unconscious apology for our faults
-- Henri-Frédéric Amiel

Pure truth cannot be assimilated by the crowd; it must be communicated by contagion.
-- Henri-Frédéric Amiel

Sacrifice still exists everywhere, and everywhere the elect of each generation suffers for the salvation of the rest.
-- Henri-Frédéric Amiel

Sacrifice, which is the passion of great souls, has never been the law of societies.
-- Henri-Frédéric Amiel

Self-interest is but the survival of the animal in us. Humanity only begins for man with self-surrender.
-- Henri-Frédéric Amiel

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

Society lives by faith, and develops by science.
-- Henri-Frédéric Amiel

Sympathy is the first condition of criticism.
-- Henri-Frédéric Amiel

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

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

The fire which enlightens is the same fire which consumes.
-- Henri-Frédéric Amiel

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

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
-- Henri-Frédéric 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
-- Henri-Frédéric Amiel

There is no respect for others without humility in one's self.
-- Henri-Frédéric 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.
-- Henri-Frédéric Amiel

To depersonalize man is the dominant drift of our times.
-- Henri-Frédéric 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.
-- Henri-Frédéric Amiel

Doing easily what others find difficult is talent; doing what is impossible for talent is genius.
-- Henri-Frédéric Amiel

To know how to grow old is the master work of wisdom, and one of the most difficult chapters in the great art of living.
-- Henri-Frédéric 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.
-- Henri-Frédéric Amiel

True humility is contentment.
-- Henri-Frédéric Amiel

Uncertainty is the refuge of hope.
-- Henri-Frédéric Amiel

We are never more discontented with others than when we are discontented with ourselves.
-- Henri-Frédéric Amiel

We become actors without realizing it, and actors without wanting to.
-- Henri-Frédéric Amiel

We must dare to be happy, and dare to confess it, regarding ourselves always as the depositories, not as the authors of our own job.
-- Henri-Frédéric Amiel

We only understand that which already within us.
-- Henri-Frédéric 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.
-- Henri-Frédéric Amiel

Will localizes us; thought universalizes us.
-- Henri-Frédéric 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
-- Henri-Frédéric Amiel

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

The age of great men is going; the epoch of the ant-hill, of life in multiplicity, is beginning.
-- Henri-Frédéric Amiel