Inspirational Quotes by Henri Frederic Amiel (Swiss Philosopher, Writer)

Inspirational Quotations by Henri Frederic Amiel (Swiss Philosopher, Writer)

Henri Frédéric Amiel (1821–81) was a Swiss moral philosopher, poet, and critic.

Born in Geneva, Amiel lost his parents at an early age. He traveled widely, became intimate with the intellectual leaders of Europe, and made a unique study of German philosophy in Berlin. He became a professor of aesthetics (1849) and moral philosophy (1853–81) at the Academy of Geneva.

Amiel published some essays and poems, but his fame as an intellectual and a critic rest on his diaries (1847 onwards,) published posthumously as Journal in Time (1883; Private Journal.) British writer Mary Augusta Ward, at the suggestion of academic Mark Pattison, translated it into English.

More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Henri Frederic Amiel

Faith is a certitude without proofs … a sentiment, for it is a hope; it is an instinct, for it precedes all outward instruction.
—Henri Frederic Amiel
Topics: Faith, Belief

Sacrifice still exists everywhere, and everywhere the elect of each generation suffers for the salvation of the rest.
—Henri Frederic Amiel
Topics: Sacrifice

Common sense is the measure of the possible; it is composed of experience and prevision; it is calculation applied to life.
—Henri Frederic Amiel
Topics: Experience, Common Sense

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 Frederic Amiel
Topics: Perseverance, Self-improvement, Self-Discovery, Progress

The only substance properly so called is the soul.
—Henri Frederic Amiel
Topics: Soul

Order means light and peace, inward liberty and free command over one’s self; order is power.
—Henri Frederic Amiel
Topics: Order

Every dawn signs a new contract with existence.
—Henri Frederic Amiel

Work while you have the light. You are responsible for the talent that has been entrusted to you.
—Henri Frederic Amiel
Topics: Work

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 Frederic Amiel

If nationality is consent, the state is compulsion.
—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.
—Henri Frederic Amiel
Topics: Difficulty

The fire which enlightens is the same fire which consumes.
—Henri Frederic Amiel
Topics: Passion

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.
—Henri Frederic Amiel
Topics: Woman, Feelings, Love

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 Frederic Amiel
Topics: Simplicity, Decisions

Charm is the quality in others that makes us more satisfied with ourselves.
—Henri Frederic Amiel
Topics: Satisfaction, Charm

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 Frederic Amiel
Topics: Teaching, Charity, Giving

Without faith a man can do nothing. But faith can stifle all science.
—Henri Frederic Amiel
Topics: Faith

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 Frederic Amiel
Topics: Philosophers, Philosophy

To learn new habits is everything, for it is to reach the substance of life. Life is but a tissue of habits.
—Henri Frederic Amiel
Topics: Habit

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 Frederic Amiel

What is an intelligent man? A man who enters with ease and completeness into the spirit of things and the intention of persons, and who arrives at an end by the shortest route.
—Henri Frederic Amiel
Topics: Intelligence

Clever people will recognize and tolerate nothing but cleverness.
—Henri Frederic Amiel
Topics: Intelligence, Cleverness, Intellectuals

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.
—Henri Frederic Amiel
Topics: Women

There is no respect for others without humility in one’s self.
—Henri Frederic Amiel
Topics: Respect, Respectability

Pure truth cannot be assimilated by the crowd; it must be communicated by contagion.
—Henri Frederic Amiel
Topics: Communication

Every life is a profession of faith and exercises an inevitable and silent influence.
—Henri Frederic Amiel
Topics: Faith, Leadership, Influence

Nothing resembles pride so much as discouragement.
—Henri Frederic Amiel
Topics: Failure

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.
—Henri Frederic Amiel
Topics: Heroism

Man is a passion which brings a will into play, which works an intelligence.
—Henri Frederic Amiel
Topics: Instincts

We become actors without realizing it, and actors without wanting to.
—Henri Frederic Amiel
Topics: Actors, Acting

An error is the more dangerous in proportion to the degree of truth which it contains.
—Henri Frederic Amiel
Topics: Mistakes

Tears are the symbol of the inability of the soul to restrain its emotion and retain its self command.
—Henri Frederic Amiel
Topics: Crying, Tears

Man never knows what he wants; he aspires to penetrate mysteries and as soon as he has, he wants to reestablish them. Ignorance irritates him and knowledge cloys.
—Henri Frederic Amiel
Topics: Self-Discovery

Great men are the real men, in them nature has succeeded.
—Henri Frederic Amiel
Topics: Greatness

In every loving woman there is a priestess of the past—a pious guardian of some affection, of which the object has disappeared.
—Henri Frederic Amiel
Topics: The Past, Lovers

To feel keenly the poetry of a morning’s roses, one has to have just escaped from the claws of this vulture which we call sickness.
—Henri Frederic Amiel
Topics: Health

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 Frederic Amiel
Topics: Belief

A modest garden contains, for those who know how to look and to wait, more instruction than a library.
—Henri Frederic Amiel
Topics: Gardening

To repel one’s cross is to make it heavier.
—Henri Frederic Amiel
Topics: Acceptance, Responsibility

Will localizes us; thought universalizes us.
—Henri Frederic Amiel
Topics: Will Power, Will, Willpower