To live we must conquer incessantly, we must have the courage to be happy.
—Henri Frederic Amiel
Topics: Courage, Happiness
Our dependence outweighs our independence, for we are independent only in our desire, while we are dependent on our health, on nature, on society, on everything in us and outside us.
—Henri Frederic Amiel
Topics: Man
We are never more discontented with others than when we are discontented with ourselves.
—Henri Frederic Amiel
Topics: Relationships
Our duty is to be useful, not according to our desires, but according to our powers.
—Henri Frederic Amiel
Destiny has two ways of crushing us—by refusing our wishes and by fulfilling them.
—Henri Frederic Amiel
Topics: Fate, Wishes, Perspective
Action is but coarsened thought; thought become concrete, obscure, and unconscious.
—Henri Frederic Amiel
Topics: Action
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 Frederic Amiel
Topics: Enthusiasm, Passion
Music is harmony, harmony is perfection, perfection is our dream, and our dream is heaven.
—Henri Frederic Amiel
Topics: Music
Cleverness is serviceable for everything, sufficient for nothing.
—Henri Frederic Amiel
Topics: Intelligence, Cleverness
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: Lovers, The Past
The fire which enlightens is the same fire which consumes.
—Henri Frederic Amiel
Topics: Passion
Sacrifice still exists everywhere, and everywhere the elect of each generation suffers for the salvation of the rest.
—Henri Frederic Amiel
Topics: Sacrifice
Man becomes man only by his intelligence, but he is man only by his heart.
—Henri Frederic Amiel
Topics: Intelligence, Instincts
We must dare to be happy, and dare to confess it, regarding ourselves always as the depositories, not as the authors of our own joy.
—Henri Frederic Amiel
He who is silent is forgotten; he who abstains is taken at his word; he who does not advance falls back; he who stops is overwhelmed, distanced, crushed; he who ceases to grow greater becomes smaller; he who leaves off, gives up; the stationary condition is the beginning of the end.
—Henri Frederic Amiel
Topics: Silence
Dreams are excursions into the limbo of things, a semi-deliverance from the human prison.
—Henri Frederic Amiel
Topics: Dreams
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
Society lives by faith, and develops by science.
—Henri Frederic Amiel
Topics: Society
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
Oh, order! Material order, intellectual order, moral order! What a comfort and strength, and what an economy! To know where we are going and what we want; that is order. To keep ones word, to do the right thing, and at the right time: more order. To have everything under ones hand, to put ones whole army through its manoeuvres, to work with all ones resources: still order. To discipline ones habits and efforts and wishes, to organize ones life and distribute ones time, to measure ones duties and assert ones rights, to put ones capital and resources, ones talents and opportunities to profit: again and always order. Order is light, peace, inner freedom, self-determination: it is power. To conceive order, to return to order, to realize order in oneself, around oneself, by means of oneself, this is aesthetic and moral beauty, it is well-being, it is what ought to be.
—Henri Frederic Amiel
Life is an apprenticeship to constant renunciations, to the steady failure of our claims, our hopes, our powers, our liberty.
—Henri Frederic Amiel
Topics: Life
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 Frederic Amiel
Topics: Aging, Age, Old Age
Truth is not only violated by falsehood; it may be equally outraged by silence.
—Henri Frederic Amiel
Clever people will recognize and tolerate nothing but cleverness.
—Henri Frederic Amiel
Topics: Cleverness, Intellectuals, Intelligence
Order is a great person’s need and their true well being.
—Henri Frederic Amiel
Topics: Order
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 Frederic Amiel
Topics: Teachers, Education, Teaching
Man is a passion which brings a will into play, which works an intelligence.
—Henri Frederic Amiel
Topics: Instincts
Blessed be childhood, which brings down something of heaven into the midst of our rough earthliness.
—Henri Frederic Amiel
Topics: Children
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 Frederic Amiel
Topics: Thinking, Thought, Thoughts
Nothing resembles pride so much as discouragement.
—Henri Frederic Amiel
Topics: Failure
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
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