Learn to … be what you are, and learn to resign with a good grace all that you are not.
—Henri Frederic Amiel
Topics: Expectations, Realistic Expectations, Awareness, Acceptance, Realization
To live we must conquer incessantly, we must have the courage to be happy.
—Henri Frederic Amiel
Topics: Courage, Happiness
Our duty is to be useful, not according to our desires, but according to our powers.
—Henri Frederic Amiel
Music is harmony, harmony is perfection, perfection is our dream, and our dream is heaven.
—Henri Frederic Amiel
Topics: Music
I’m not interested in age. People who tell me their age are silly. You’re as old as you feel.
—Henri Frederic Amiel
Topics: Aging, Age
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
Society lives by faith, and develops by science.
—Henri Frederic Amiel
Topics: Society
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
Action is coarsened thought; thought becomes concrete, obscure, and unconscious.
—Henri Frederic Amiel
Topics: Action
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
Sacrifice, which is the passion of great souls, has never been the law of societies.
—Henri Frederic Amiel
Topics: Sacrifice
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, Love, Feelings
It is not what he has, or even what he does which expresses the worth of a man, but what he is.
—Henri Frederic Amiel
To depersonalize man is the dominant drift of our times.
—Henri Frederic Amiel
Topics: Respectability, Respect
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
Doing easily what others find difficult is talent; doing what is impossible for others is genius.
—Henri Frederic Amiel
Topics: Genius, Difficulty
For purposes of action, nothing is more useful than narrowness of thought combined with energy of will.
—Henri Frederic Amiel
Topics: Action, Secrets of Success
The man who has no inner life is a slave to his surroundings.
—Henri Frederic Amiel
Topics: Attitude
We are all visionaries, and what we see is our soul in things.
—Henri Frederic Amiel
Topics: Vision
Pure truth cannot be assimilated by the crowd; it must be communicated by contagion.
—Henri Frederic Amiel
Topics: Communication
Will localizes us; thought universalizes us.
—Henri Frederic Amiel
Topics: Will Power, Willpower, Will
So long as a person is capable of self-renewal, he is a living being.
—Henri Frederic Amiel
Topics: Change, 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: Decisions, Simplicity
Self-interest is but the survival of the animal in us. Humanity only begins for man with self-surrender.
—Henri Frederic Amiel
Topics: Selfishness, Self-interest
Order means light and peace, inward liberty and free command over one’s self; order is power.
—Henri Frederic Amiel
Topics: Order
Cleverness is serviceable for everything, sufficient for nothing.
—Henri Frederic Amiel
Topics: Cleverness, Intelligence
If nationality is consent, the state is compulsion.
—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
The man who insists upon seeing with perfect clearness before he decides, never decides. Accept life, and you must accept regret.
—Henri Frederic Amiel
Topics: Perfect, Regret, Perfection, Decision, Decisions, Learn, Uncertainty, Decide, Acceptance, Doubt
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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