Quotes By Henri Frederic Amiel

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

Thought is a kind of opium; it can intoxicate us, while still broad awake; it can make transparent the mountains and everything that exists.

The man who insists upon seeing with perfect clearness before he decides, never decides. Accept life, and you must accept regret.

Order is power.

The best path through life is the highway.

Woman is the salvation or the destruction of the family. She carries its destiny in the folds of her mantle.

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.

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

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.

If nationality is consent, the state is compulsion.

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

Truth is not only violated by falsehood; it may be equally outraged by silence.

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.

Pure truth cannot be assimilated by the crowd; it must be communicated by contagion.

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.

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

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

Cleverness is serviceable for everything, sufficient for nothing.

Sacrifice, which is the passion of great souls, has never been the law of societies.

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.

Society lives by faith, and develops by science.

Learn to... be what you are, and learn to resign with a good grace all that you are not.

Tell me what you feel in your room when the full moon is shining in upon you and your lamp is dying out, and I will tell you how old you are, and I shall know if you are happy.

Clever people will recognize and tolerate nothing but cleverness.

In health there is freedom. Health is the first of all liberties.

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

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.

The only substance properly so called is the soul.

There is no respect for others without humility in one's self.

Common sense is calculation applied to life.