Henri-Frédéric Amiel - Living Quotes

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In the conduct of life, habits count for more than maxims, because habit is a living maxim, becomes flesh and instinct. To reform one's maxims is nothing: it is but to change the title of the book. To learn new habits is everything, for it is to reach the substance of life. Life is but a tissue of habits.

Henri-Frédéric Amiel
He who floats with the current, who does not guide himself according to higher principles, who has no ideal, no convictions-such a man is... a thing moved, instead of a living and moving being-an echo, not a voice. The man who has no inner-life is a slave of his surroundings as the barometer is the obedient servant of the air.

Henri-Frédéric Amiel
To know how to grow old is the masterwork of wisdom, and one of the most difficult chapters in the great art of living.

Henri-Frédéric Amiel
Put personal ambition away from you, and then you will find consolation in living or in dying, whatever may happen to you.

Henri-Frédéric Amiel
I have never felt any inward assurance of genius, or any presentiment of glory or of happiness. I have never seen myself in imagination great or famous, or even a husband, a father, an influential citizen. This indifference to the future, this absolute self-distrust, are, no doubt, to be taken as signs. What dreams I have are all vague and indefinite; I ought not to live, for I am now scarcely capable of living.

Henri-Frédéric Amiel
Let the living live; and you, gather together your thoughts, leave behind you a legacy of feeling and ideas; you will be most useful so.

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

Henri-Frédéric Amiel