Henri-Frédéric Amiel quotes
Henri-Frédéric Amiel (1821–1881): Swiss philosopher and poet. The library holds 116 quotes by Henri-Frédéric Amiel. The 60 below are the most quoted; search the library in the maker for the rest.
Often about: life, faith, truth, nature, love, time
The best-known Henri-Frédéric Amiel quotes
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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.
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It is not what he has, nor even what he does, which directly expresses the worth of a man, but what he is.
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He who is too much afraid of being duped has lost the power of being magnanimous.
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Dreams are excursions into the limbo of things, a semi-deliverance from the human prison.
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The complete spiritualisation of the animal element in nature is the task of our species.
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True love is that which ennobles the personality, fortifies the heart, and sanctifies the existence.
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There is no respect for others without humility in one’s self.
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Without passion man is a mere latent force and possibility.
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Respect for others is the first condition of “savoir-vivre.”
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Never mind the future: be what you ought to be; the rest is God’s affair.
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Thought is like opium: it can intoxicate us while it leaves us broad awake.
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Analysis kills spontaneity, just as grain, once it is ground into flour, no longer springs and germinates.
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A well-governed mind learns in time, to find pleasure in nothing but the true and the just.
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Materialism coarsens and petrifies everything; makes everything vulgar, and every truth false.
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Man becomes man only by the intelligence, but he is man only by the heart.
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To do what is impossible for talent is the mark of genius.
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The Cross is the guarantee of the Gospel; therefore it has been its standard.
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At the sight of a man we too say to ourselves, Let us be men.
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True poetry is truer than science, because it is synthetic, and seizes at once what the combination of all the sciences is able, at most, to attain as a final result.
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Man is only what he becomes, but he becomes only what he is.
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We are never more discontented with others than when we are discontented with ourselves.
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Sacrifice still exists everywhere, and everywhere the elect of each generation suffers for the salvation of the rest.
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Before giving advice we must have secured its acceptance, or rather, have made it desired.
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From every spot on earth we are equally near heaven and the infinite.
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A progress of society on the one hand, a decline of souls on the other.
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To do easily what is difficult for others is the mark of talent.
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Health is the first of all liberties, and happiness gives us the energy which is the basis of health.
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Christianity is the practical demonstration that holiness and pity, justice and mercy, may meet together and become one in man and in God.
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Heroism is the brilliant triumph of the soul over fear; fear of poverty, of suffering, of calumny, of sickness, of isolation and death… It is the dazzling and glorious concentration of courage.
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Each man begins the world afresh, and the last man repeats the blunders of the first.
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It is not history which educates the conscience; it is conscience which educates history.
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Christianity is salvation by the conversion of the will; humanism by the enlightenment of the mind.
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To understand things we must once have been in them, and then have come out of them.
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Nothing is more characteristic of a man than his behaviour towards fools.
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What governs men is the fear of truth, except such as is useful to them.
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The man who insists upon seeing with perfect clearness before he decides, never decides.
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A man only understands what is akin to some things already in his mind.
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If we wish to do good to men, we must pity and not despise them.
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Art is simply a bringing into relief of the obscure thought of Nature.
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Clever people will recognise and tolerate nothing but cleverness.
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Civilisation tends to corrupt men, as large towns vitiate the air.
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Christianity has not yet penetrated into the whole heart of Jesus.
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Sacrifice, which is the passion of great souls, has never been the law of societies.
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Duty has the virtue of making us feel the reality of a positive world, while at the same time it detaches us from it.
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Democracy has done a wrong to everything that is not first-rate.
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The divine state, “par excellence,” is silence and repose.
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We are all visionaries, and what we see is our soul in things.
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Barbarism is no longer at our frontiers; it lives side by side with us.
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Great men are the true men, the men in whom Nature has succeeded.
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A narrow faith has much more energy than an enlightened one.
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Christianity is the apotheosis of grief, the marvellous transmutation of suffering into triumph, the death of death and the defeat of sin.
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Religion is a higher and supernatural life, mystical in its roots and practical in its fruits.
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Common-sense is the measure of the possible; it is calculation applied to life.
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Happiness is nothing but the conquest of God through love.
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Reflection dissolves reverie and burns her delicate wings.
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In choosing friends, we should choose those whose qualities are innate, and their virtues virtues of the temperament.
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Tears are the symbol of the inability of the soul to restrain its emotion and retain its self-command.
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The fire which enlightens is the same fire which consumes.
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Self-interest is but the survival of the animal in us. Humanity only begins for man with self-surrender.
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An error is the more dangerous in proportion to the degree of truth which it contains.