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Henri-Frédéric Amiel Quotes
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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Nothing is more characteristic of a man than the manner in which he behaves toward fools.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
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To win true peace, a man needs to feel himself directed, pardoned, and sustained by a supreme power, to feel himself in the right road, at the point where God would have him be - in order with God and the universe. This faith gives strength and calm.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
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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-Frédéric Amiel
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When I write for publication every word is misery, and my pen stumbles at every line, so anxious am I to find the ideally best expression, and so great is the number of possibilities which open before me at every step.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
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Liberty, equality - bad principles! The only true principle for humanity is justice; and justice to the feeble is protection and kindness.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
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Time is but the space between our memories; as soon as we cease to perceive this space, time has disappeared.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
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The mind must have for ballast the clear conception of duty, if it is not to fluctuate between levity and despair.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
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A journal takes the place of a confidant, that is, of friend or wife; it becomes a substitute for production, a substitute for country and public. It is a grief-cheating device, a mode of escape and withdrawal; but, factotum as it is, though it takes the place of everything, properly speaking it represents nothing at all...
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
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It would have been a joy to me to be smiled upon, loved, encouraged, welcomed, and to obtain what I was so ready to give, kindness and goodwill. But to hunt down consideration and reputation -- to force the esteem of others -- seemed to me an effort unworthy of myself, almost a degradation.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
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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-Frédéric Amiel
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If man was what he ought to be, he would be adored by the animals...
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
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The germs of all things are in every heart, and the greatest criminals as well as the greatest heroes are but different modes of ourselves.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
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One may guess the why and wherefore of a tear and yet find it too subtle to give any account of. A tear may be the poetical resume of so many simultaneous impressions, the quintessence of so many opposing thoughts! It is like a drop of one of those precious elixirs of the East which contain the life of twenty plants fused into a single aroma.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
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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-Frédéric Amiel
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Our life is nothing, it is true, but our life is divine. A breath of nature annihilates us, but we surpass nature in penetrating far beyond her vast phantasmagoria to the changeless and the eternal.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
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Quote of the day
At last, in 1611, was made, under the auspices of King James, the famous King James version; and this is the great literary monument of the English language.
Lafcadio Hearn
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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