Henri-Frédéric Amiel - Man Quotes

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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
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
At the bottom of the modern man there is always a great thirst for self-forgetfulness, self-distraction... and therefore he turns away from all those problems and abysses which might recall to him his own nothingness.

Henri-Frédéric Amiel
The soul of nature is divined by the poet; the man of science only serves to accumulate materials for its demonstration.

Henri-Frédéric Amiel
Every man is a priest, even involuntarily; his conduct is an unspoken sermon, which is forever preaching to others.

Henri-Frédéric Amiel
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
If man was what he ought to be, he would be adored by the animals...

Henri-Frédéric Amiel
Man is a passion which brings a will into play, which works an intelligence.

Henri-Frédéric Amiel
The history of man is essentially zoological; it becomes human late in the day, and then only in the beautiful souls, the souls alive to justice, goodness, enthusiasm, and devotion. The angel shows itself rarely and with difficulty through the highly-organized brute.

Henri-Frédéric Amiel
Nothing is more characteristic of a man than the manner in which he behaves toward fools.

Henri-Frédéric Amiel
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
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
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
A man only understands what is akin to something already existing in himself.

Henri-Frédéric Amiel
To be misunderstood even by those whom one loves is the cross and bitterness of life. It is the secret of that sad and melancholy smile on the lips of great men which so few understand; it is the cruelest trial reserved for self-devotion; it is what must have oftenest wrung the heart of the Son of man; and if God could suffer, it would be the wound we should be forever inflicting upon Him. He also — He above all — is the great misunderstood, the least comprehended.

Henri-Frédéric Amiel
There is no curing a sick man who believes himself to be in health.

Henri-Frédéric Amiel
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
Without faith a man can do nothing. But faith can stifle all science.

Henri-Frédéric Amiel
The test of every religious, political, or educational system is the man that it forms.

Henri-Frédéric Amiel
The more a man loves, the more he suffers. The sum of possible grief for each soul is in proportion to its degree of perfection.

Henri-Frédéric Amiel
A man without passion is only a latent force, only a possibility, like a stone waiting for the blow from the iron to give forth sparks.

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
The man who insists upon seeing with perfect clearness before he decides, never decides.

Henri-Frédéric Amiel
The philosopher is like a man fasting in the midst of universal intoxication. He alone perceives the illusion of which all creatures are the willing playthings; he is less duped than his neighbor by his own nature. He judges more sanely, he sees things as they are. It is in this that his liberty consists - in the ability to see clearly and soberly, in the power of mental record.

Henri-Frédéric Amiel
Without passion man is a mere latent force and possibility, like the flint which awaits the shock of the iron before it can give forth its spark.

Henri-Frédéric Amiel