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Henri-Frédéric Amiel Quotes
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Sympathy is the first condition of criticism; reason and justice presuppose, at their origin, emotion.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
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Self-interest is but the survival of the animal in us. Humanity only begins for man with self-surrender.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
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Our systems, perhaps, are nothing more than an unconscious apology for our faults, a gigantic scaffolding whose object is to hide from us our favorite sin.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
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An error is the more dangerous in proportion to the degree of truth which it contains.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
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The art which is grand and yet simple is that which presupposes the greatest elevation both in artist and in public.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
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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-Frédéric Amiel
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To understand is to possess the thing understood, first by sympathy and then by intelligence.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
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A musical theme once exhausted, finds its due refuge and repose in silence.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
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Self-interest is an inexhaustible source of convenient illusions. The number of beings who wish to see truly is extraordinarily small.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
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The great majority of men are but tangled skeins, imperfect keyboards, so many specimens of restless or stagnant chaos--and what makes their situation almost hopeless is the fact that they take pleasure in it. There is no curing a sick man who believes himself in health.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
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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-Frédéric Amiel
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I wonder whether I should gain anything by the attempt to assume a character which is not mine. My wavering manner, born of doubt and scruple, has at least the advantage of rendering all the different shades of my thought, and of being sincere. If it were to become terse, affirmative, resolute, would it not be a mere imitation?
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
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The habit of scientific analysis... exhausts the material offered to it...
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
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He who is too much afraid of being duped has lost the power of being magnanimous.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
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A man only understands what is akin to something already existing in himself.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
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Mother of Marvels, mysterious and tender Nature, why do we not live more in thee.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
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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-Frédéric Amiel
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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 gangrene, of a storm, of a revolution.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
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Every landscape is, as it were, a state of the soul, and whoever penetrates into both is astonished to find how much likeness there is in each detail.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
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Criticism is above all a gift, an intuition, a matter of tact and flair; it cannot be taught or demonstrated — it is an art.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
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Man is saved by love and duty, and by the hope that springs from duty, or rather from the moral facts of consciousness, as a flower springs from the soil.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
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Our duty is to be useful, not according to our desires but according to our powers.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
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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-Frédéric Amiel
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Time and space are fragments of the infinite for the use of finite creatures.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
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Charm: the quality in others that makes us more satisfied with ourselves.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
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Quote of the day
Autumn burned brightly, a running flame through the mountains, a torch flung to the trees.
Faith Baldwin
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
Creative Commons
Born:
September 27, 1821
Died:
May 11, 1881
(aged 59)
Bio:
Henri Frédéric Amiel was a Swiss moral philosopher, poet, and critic.
Most used words:
life
god
man
love
happiness
heaven
thought
liberty
soul
time
heart
living
art
duty
mind
Henri-Frédéric Amiel on Wikipedia
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