Henri Frederic Amiel famous quotes

There is no respect for others without humility in one's self.
-- Henri Frederic Amiel

#Inspirational #Respect #Humility

Learn to... be what you are, and learn to resign with a good grace all that you are not.
-- Henri Frederic Amiel

#Being Yourself #Inspiration #Being Single

Truth is not only violated by falsehood; it may be equally outraged by silence.
-- Henri Frederic Amiel

#Truth #Anger #Silence

Doing easily what others find difficult is talent; doing what is impossible for talent is genius.
-- Henri Frederic Amiel

#Inspirational #Education #Intelligence

Man becomes man only by his intelligence, but he is man only by his heart.
-- Henri Frederic Amiel

#Wisdom #Heart #Men

Music is harmony, harmony is perfection, perfection is our dream, and our dream is heaven.
-- Henri Frederic Amiel

#Music #Dream #Peace

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

#Independent Women #Intelligent #Wish

For purposes of action nothing is more useful than narrowness of thought combined with energy of will.
-- Henri Frederic Amiel

#Inspirational #Life #Success

Tell me what you feel in your room when the full moon is shining in upon you and your lamp is dying out, and I will tell you how old you are, and I shall know if you are happy.
-- Henri Frederic Amiel

#Happiness #Moon #Shining

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

#Art #Live Life #Suffering

Clever people will recognize and tolerate nothing but cleverness.
-- Henri Frederic Amiel

#Clever #People #Intelligence

The man who insists upon seeing with perfect clearness before he decides, never decides. Accept life, and you must accept regret.
-- Henri Frederic Amiel

#Regret #Men #Perfect

Thankfulness is the beginning of gratitude. Gratitude is the completion of thankfulness. Thankfulness may consist merely of words. Gratitude is shown in acts.
-- Henri Frederic Amiel

#Inspirational #Motivational #Thank You

Our duty is to be useful, not according to our desires but according to our powers.
-- Henri Frederic Amiel

#Life #Ambition #Responsibility

Destiny has two ways of crushing us - by refusing our wishes and by fulfilling them.
-- Henri Frederic Amiel

#Crush #Fate #Destiny

Charm is the quality in others that makes us more satisfied with ourselves.
-- Henri Frederic Amiel

#Love #Quality #Charm

Self-interest is but the survival of the animal in us. Humanity only begins for man with self-surrender.
-- Henri Frederic Amiel

#Men #Animal #Self

Let mystery have its place in you ; do not be always turning up your whole soil with the ploughshare of self-examination, but leave a little fallow corner in your heart ready for any seed the winds may bring ...
-- Henri Frederic Amiel

#Heart #Self #Wind

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

#Educational #Garden #Waiting

Action is coarsened thought; thought becomes concrete, obscure, and unconscious.
-- Henri Frederic Amiel

#Action #Obscure #Concrete

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

#Passion #Men #Iron

To do what is impossible for talent is the mark of genius.
-- Henri Frederic Amiel

#Genius #Impossible #Talent

Common sense is the measure of the possible; it is composed of experience and prevision; it is calculation applied to life.
-- Henri Frederic Amiel

#Science #Common Sense #Experience

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

#Reflection #Order #Doubt

Almost everything comes from almost nothing.
-- Henri Frederic Amiel

#Time

Everything you need for better future and success has already been written. And guess what? All you have to do is go to the library.
-- Henri Frederic Amiel

#Success #Congratulations #Future

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

#Letting Go #Cutting #Men

Kindness is gladdening the hearts of those who are traveling the dark journey with us.
-- Henri Frederic Amiel

#Kindness #Heart #Dark

Philosophy means the complete liberty of the mind, and therefore independence of all social, political or religious prejudice... It loves one thing only... truth.
-- Henri Frederic Amiel

#Religious #Philosophy #Mean

We become actors without realizing it, and actors without wanting to.
-- Henri Frederic Amiel

#Actors #Realizing

Will localizes us, thought universalizes us.
-- Henri Frederic Amiel

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

#Men #Greatness #Order

To live we must conquer incessantly, we must have the courage to be happy.
-- Henri Frederic Amiel

#Courage #Conquer #Incessantly

So long as a person is capable of self-renewal they are a living being. -Henri
-- Henri Frederic Amiel

#Change #Self #Long

Every life is a profession of faith, and exercises an inevitable and silent influence.
-- Henri Frederic Amiel

#Exercise #Quiet #Life Is

Analysis kills spontaneity. The grain once ground into flour springs and germinates no more.
-- Henri Frederic Amiel

#Spring #Creativity #Analysis

I'm not interested in age. People who tell me their age are silly. You're as old as you feel.
-- Henri Frederic Amiel

#Inspirational #Motivational #Happy Birthday

The man who has no inner-life is a slave to his surroundings.
-- Henri Frederic Amiel

#Attitude #Positive Thinking #Men

Uncertainty is the refuge of hope.
-- Henri Frederic Amiel

#Hope #Refuge #Uncertainty

The test of every religious, political, or educational system, is the man which it forms. If a system injures the intelligence it is bad. If it injures the character it is vicious. If it injures the conscience it is criminal.
-- Henri Frederic Amiel

#Religious #Educational #Character

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

#Children #Blessed #Childhood

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

#Running #Perseverance #Mean

The test of every religious, political, or educational system is the man that it forms.
-- Henri Frederic Amiel

#Religious #Educational #Men

Society lives by faith, and develops by science.
-- Henri Frederic Amiel

#Faith #Society #Live By

Any landscape is a condition of the spirit.
-- Henri Frederic Amiel

#Landscape #Spirit

To do easily what is difficult for others is the mark of talent.
-- Henri Frederic Amiel

#Talent #Mark #Difficult

The great artist and thinker are the simplifiers.
-- Henri Frederic Amiel

#Artist #Great Art #Thinker

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

#Inspirational #Work #Light

Let us be true: this is the highest maxim of art and of life, the secret of eloquence and of virtue, and of all moral authority.
-- Henri Frederic Amiel

#Art #Truth #Secret

In health there is freedom. Health is the first of all liberties.
-- Henri Frederic Amiel

#Motivational #Fitness #Freedom

The unfinished is nothing.
-- Henri Frederic Amiel

#Quitting

What we call little things are merely the causes of great things.
-- Henri Frederic Amiel

#Littles #Causes #Little Things

There is no repose for the mind except in the absolute; for feeling, except in the infinite; for the soul, except in the divine.
-- Henri Frederic Amiel

#Soul #Feelings #Mind

A thousand things advance; nine hundred and ninety nine retreat; That is progress.
-- Henri Frederic Amiel

#Progress #Nine #Retreat

When everything has its proper place in our minds, we are able to stand in equilibrium with the rest of the world.
-- Henri Frederic Amiel

#Mind #World #Able

Emancipation from error is the condition of real knowledge.
-- Henri Frederic Amiel

#Atheist #Real #Errors

Our greatest illusion is to believe that we are what we think ourselves to be.
-- Henri Frederic Amiel

#Believe #Thinking #Illusion

About Jesus we must believe no one but himself.
-- Henri Frederic Amiel

#Jesus #Believe

Every man is a priest, even involuntarily; his conduct is an unspoken sermon, which is forever preaching to others.
-- Henri Frederic Amiel

#Men #Forever #Priests

Do not despise your situation; in it you must act, suffer, and conquer. From every point on earth we are equally near to heaven and to the infinite.
-- Henri Frederic Amiel

#Heaven #Suffering #Earth

The growth and development of the soul is more important than power and glory.
-- Henri Frederic Amiel

#Soul #Growth #Important

It is work which gives flavor to life.
-- Henri Frederic Amiel

#Work #Giving #Flavor

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

#Lying #Opportunity #Night

In every loving woman there is a priestess of the past
-- Henri Frederic Amiel

#Past #Priestesses

Sadness takes up the pen more readily than joy.
-- Henri Frederic Amiel

#Sadness #Joy #Pens

Faith is certitude without proofs ... Faith is a sentiment, for it is a hope; it is an instinct, for it precedes all outward instruction.
-- Henri Frederic Amiel

#Faith #Instinct #Proof

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

#Mean #Desire #Liberty

To understand is to possess the thing understood, first by sympathy and then by intelligence.
-- Henri Frederic Amiel

#Understanding #Firsts #Understood

Life alone can rekindle life.
-- Henri Frederic Amiel

#Chaos

Heroism is the brilliant triumph of the soul over the flesh - over fear...Heroism is the dazzling and glorious concentration of courage.
-- Henri Frederic Amiel

#Soul #Triumph #Heroism

How true it is that our destinies are decided by nothings and that a small imprudence helped by some insignificant accident, as an acorn is fertilized by a drop of rain, may raise the trees on which perhaps we and others shall be crucified.
-- Henri Frederic Amiel

#Rain #Destiny #Tree

At the bottom of the modern man there is always a great thirst for self-forgetfulness, self-distraction . . . and therefore he turns away from all those problems and abysses which might recall to him his own nothingness.
-- Henri Frederic Amiel

#Men #Self #Might

Order is a great person's need and their true well being.
-- Henri Frederic Amiel

#Order #Needs #Great Person

The fire which enlightens is the same fire which consumes.
-- Henri Frederic Amiel

#Passion #Fire #Feelings

The ideal doctor would be a man endowed with profound knowledge of life and of the soul, intuitively divining any suffering or disorder of whatever kind, and restoring peace by his mere presence.
-- Henri Frederic Amiel

#Health #Men #Doctors

He who is too much afraid of being duped has lost the power of being magnanimous.
-- Henri Frederic Amiel

#Too Much #Lost #Distrust

What governs men is the fear of truth.
-- Henri Frederic Amiel

#Men #Voting

To be always ready a man must be able to cut a knot, for everything cannot be untied.
-- Henri Frederic Amiel

#Cutting #Men #Able

A man only understands what is akin to something already existing in himself.
-- Henri Frederic Amiel

#Men #Understanding

The masses are the material of democracy, but its form-that is to say, the laws which express the general reason, justice, and utility-can only be rightly shaped by wisdom, which is by no means a universal property.
-- Henri Frederic Amiel

#Mean #Law #Justice

Every life is a profession of faith ...
-- Henri Frederic Amiel

#Faith #Life Is #Profession

From every spot on earth we are equally near heaven and the infinite.
-- Henri Frederic Amiel

#Heaven #Earth #Infinite

To depersonalize man is the dominant drift of our times.
-- Henri Frederic Amiel

#Respect #Men

We are always making God our accomplice, that so we may legalize our own iniquities. Every successful massacre is consecrated by a Te Deum, and the clergy have never been wanting in benedictions for any victorious enormity.
-- Henri Frederic Amiel

#Successful #Hypocrisy #May

Time is but the measure of the difficulty of a conception. Pure thought has scarcely any need of time, since it perceives the two ends of an idea almost at the same moment.
-- Henri Frederic Amiel

#Ideas #Two #Needs

Happiness has no limits, because God has neither bottom nor bounds, and because happiness is nothing but the conquest of God through love.
-- Henri Frederic Amiel

#Happiness #Limits #Bottom

Happiness does away with ugliness, and even makes the beauty of beauty.
-- Henri Frederic Amiel

#Happiness #Doe #Ugliness

Only evil grows of itself, while for goodness we want effort and courage.
-- Henri Frederic Amiel

#Evil #Effort #Want

Religion is not a method, it is a life, a higher and supernatural life, mystical in its root and practical in its fruits; a communion with God, a calm and deep enthusiasm, a love which radiates, a force which acts, a happiness which overflows.
-- Henri Frederic Amiel

#Roots #Religion #Enthusiasm

Order means light and peace, inward liberty and free command over one's self; order is power.
-- Henri Frederic Amiel

#Mean #Light #Self

Order is man's greatest need, and his true well-being.
-- Henri Frederic Amiel

#Men #Order #Needs

Latent genius is but a presumption. Everything that can be, is bound to come into being, and what never comes into being is nothing.
-- Henri Frederic Amiel

#Genius #Latent #Presumption

The more a man loves, the more he suffers. The sum of possible grief for each soul is in proportion to its degree of perfection.
-- Henri Frederic Amiel

#Love #Grief #Men

A man without passion is only a latent force, only a possibility, like a stone waiting for the blow from the iron to give forth sparks
-- Henri Frederic Amiel

#Passion #Blow #Men

What we do not understand we have no right to judge
-- Henri Frederic Amiel

#Judging

There are 2 sorts of pride: one in which we approve others, the other in which we cannot accept ourselves.
-- Henri Frederic Amiel

#Pride #Accepting

Nothing is more characteristic of a man than the manner in which he behaves toward fools.
-- Henri Frederic Amiel

#Men #Fool #He Man

A philosopher is aspires to explain away all mysteries, to dissolve them into light.
-- Henri Frederic Amiel

#Philosopher #Mystery

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

#Independent #Independence #Desire

Philosophy means the complete liberty of the mind.
-- Henri Frederic Amiel

#Philosophy #Mean #Mind