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Henri-Frédéric Amiel Quotes
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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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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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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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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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Mother of Marvels, mysterious and tender Nature, why do we not live more in thee.
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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He who is too much afraid of being duped has lost the power of being magnanimous.
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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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 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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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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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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A musical theme once exhausted, finds its due refuge and repose in silence.
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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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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Before crime is committed conscience must be corrupted, and every bad man who succeeds in reaching a high point of wickedness begins with this.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
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The tragic solemnity of existence strikes us with terrible force on that morning when we wake to find the mournful words "too late" ringing in our ears.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
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It is truth alone - scientific, established, proved, and rational truth - which is capable of satisfying nowadays the awakened minds of all classes. We may still say perhaps, 'faith governs the world,' - but the faith of the present is no longer in revelation or in the priest - it is in reason and in science.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
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Every man is a priest, even involuntarily; his conduct is an unspoken sermon, which is forever preaching to others.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
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The musician of the present day, not being able to give us what is beautiful, torments himself to give us what is new.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
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I am a spectator, so to speak, of the molecular whirlwind which men call individual life; I am conscious of an incessant metamorphosis, an irresistible movement of existence, which is going on within me -- and this phenomenology of myself serves as a window opened upon the mystery of the world.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
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Each bud flowers but once and each flower has but its minute of perfect beauty; so, in the garden of the soul each feeling has, as it were, its flowering instant, its one and only moment of expansive grace and radiant kingship.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
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Peace is not in itself a dream, but we know it only as the result of a momentary equilibrium--an accident.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
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The soul of nature is divined by the poet; the man of science only serves to accumulate materials for its demonstration.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
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Nature does at least what she can to translate into visible form the wealth of the creative formula. By the vastness of the abysses into which she penetrates, in the effort--the unsuccessful effort--to house and contain the eternal thought, we may measure the greatness of the divine mind.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
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Quote of the day
Now if the harvest is over, And the world cold, Give me the bonus of laughter, As I lose hold.
John Betjeman
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
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