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
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
Jean-Jacques Rousseau French Philosopher
Carl Gustav Jung Swiss Psychologist
Johann Kaspar Lavater Swiss Theologian, Poet
Jean Antoine Petit-Senn Swiss Poet
Hermann Hesse Swiss Novelist, Poet
Karl Barth Swiss Protestant Theologian
Alberto Giacometti Swiss Sculptor, Painter
Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi Swiss Educator
Jean-luc Godard French-born Swiss Film Director
Ralph Waldo Emerson American Philosopher