Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes 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.

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Life is short and we have never too much time for gladdening the hearts of those who are travelling the dark journey with us. Oh be swift to love, make haste to be kind.
Henri Frederic Amiel
Topics: Life, Nature, Living, Kindness

True humility is contentment.
Henri Frederic Amiel
Topics: Humility

Music is harmony, harmony is perfection, perfection is our dream, and our dream is heaven
Henri Frederic Amiel
Topics: Music

You desire to know the art of living, my friend? It is contained in one phrase: make use of suffering.
Henri Frederic Amiel
Topics: Suffering

Great men are true men, the men in whom nature has succeeded. They are not extraordinary—they are in the true order. It is the other species of men who are not what they ought to be.
Henri Frederic Amiel
Topics: Greatness & Great Things, Greatness

Action is but coarsened thought; thought become concrete, obscure, and unconscious.
Henri Frederic Amiel
Topics: Action

Materialism coarsens and petrifies everything, making everything vulgar, and every truth false.
Henri Frederic Amiel
Topics: Consumerism

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

Action and faith enslave thought, both of them in order not be troubled or inconvenienced by reflection, criticism, and doubt.
Henri Frederic Amiel
Topics: Action

Man becomes man only by his intelligence, but he is man only by his heart.
Henri Frederic Amiel
Topics: Instincts, Intelligence

We are all visionaries, and what we see is our soul in things.
Henri Frederic Amiel
Topics: Vision

How, then, find the courage for action? By slipping a little into unconsciousness, spontaneity, instinct which holds one to the earth and dictates the relatively good and useful … By accepting the human condition more simply, and candidly, by dreading troubles less, calculating less, hoping more.
Henri Frederic Amiel
Topics: Courage, Instincts, Secrets of Success

What we call little things are merely the causes of great things; they are the beginning, the embryo, and it is the point of departure which, generally speaking, decides the whole future of an existence. One single black speck may be the beginning of a gangrene, of a storm, of a revolution.
Henri Frederic Amiel
Topics: Things, Little Things

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: Decision, Learn, Decide, Doubt, Perfect, Acceptance, Decisions, Perfection, Uncertainty, Regret

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

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

He who floats with the current, who does not guide himself according to higher principles, who has no ideal, no convictions-such a man is a mere article of the world’s furniture-a thing moved, instead of a living and moving being-an echo, not a voice.
Henri Frederic Amiel
Topics: Principles

Obstinacy is will asserting itself without being able to justify itself. It is persistence without a reasonable motive. It is the tenacity of self-love substituted for that of reason and conscience.
Henri Frederic Amiel

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: Charity, Giving, Teaching

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

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

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: Belief, Faith

Blessed be childhood, which brings down something of heaven into the midst of our rough earthliness.
Henri Frederic Amiel
Topics: Children

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: Common Sense, Experience

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

Order is power.
Henri Frederic Amiel
Topics: Order

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

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

Woman is the salvation or the destruction of the family. She carries its destiny in the folds of her mantle.
Henri Frederic Amiel
Topics: Women, Family

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: Love, Woman, Feelings

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