Henri-Frédéric Amiel quotes - page 6

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)
To understand is to possess the thing understood, first by sympathy and then by intelligence. View quote
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
The unfinished is nothing. View quote
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 illness, of loneliness and of death. There is no real piety without heroism. Heroism is the dazzling and glorious con. View quote
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
Time and space are fragments of the infinite for the use of the finite creatures. View quote
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
Dreams are excursions into the limbo of things, A semi-deliverance from the human prison. View quote
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. View quote
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
True love is that which ennobles the personality, fortifies the heart, and sanctifies the existence. View quote
Henri-Frédéric 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. View quote
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
To depersonalize man is the dominant drift of our times. View quote
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
To be always ready a man must be able to cut a knot, for everything cannot be untied. (Henri-Frédéric Amiel)
Common sense is the measure of the possible. View quote
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
It is dangerous to abandon one's self to the luxury of grief it deprives one of courage and even of the wish for recovery. View quote
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
A thousand things advance nine hundred and ninety-nine retreat that is progress. View quote
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
A man only understands what is akin to something already existing in himself. View quote
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
I do not deny the rights of democracy, but I have no illusions as to the uses that will be made of those rights so long as wisdom is rare and pride abundant. View quote
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
Order is power. View quote
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
A modest garden contains, for those who know how to look and to wait, more instruction than a library. View quote
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
Life is short. Be swift to love Make haste to be kind. View quote
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. View quote
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
Will localizes us thought universalizes us. (Henri-Frédéric Amiel)
You desire to know the art of living, my friend It is contained in one phrase make use of suffering. View quote
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. View quote
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. View quote
Henri-Frédéric 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. View quote
Henri-Frédéric Amiel