Swiss philosopher, poet & critic (1821-1881)
What doctor possesses such curative resources as those latent in a spark of happiness or a single ray of hope?
HENRI-FREDERIC AMIEL
Journal Intime
Time is the supreme illusion. It is but the inner prism by which we decompose being and life, the mode under which we perceive successively what is simultaneous in idea.
HENRI-FREDERIC AMIEL
Journal Intime
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-FREDERIC AMIEL
Journal Intime
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-FREDERIC AMIEL
introduction, Journal Intime
As it is impossible to be outside God, the best is consciously to dwell in Him.
HENRI-FREDERIC AMIEL
Journal Intime
At bottom there is but one subject of study: the forms and metamorphoses of mind. All other subjects may be reduced to that; all other studies bring us back to this study.
HENRI-FREDERIC AMIEL
Journal Intime
The spirit of sarcasm lives and thrives in the midst of universal wreck; its balls are enchanted and itself invulnerable, and it braves retaliations and reprisals because itself is a mere flash, a bodiless and magical nothing.
HENRI-FREDERIC AMIEL
Journal Intime
Truth is the secret of eloquence and of virtue, the basis of moral authority; it is the highest summit of art and of life.
HENRI-FREDERIC AMIEL
Journal Intime
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-FREDERIC AMIEL
Journal Intime
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-FREDERIC AMIEL
Journal Intime
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-FREDERIC AMIEL
Journal Intime
To shun one's cross is to make it heavier.
HENRI-FREDERIC AMIEL
Journal Intime
A musical theme once exhausted, finds its due refuge and repose in silence.
HENRI-FREDERIC AMIEL
Journal Intime
Nothing finite is true, is interesting, is worthy to fix my attention. All that is particular is exclusive, and all that is exclusive repels me.
HENRI-FREDERIC AMIEL
introduction, Journal Intime
Life is the apprenticeship to progressive renunciation, to the steady diminution of our claims, of our hopes, of our powers, of our liberty.
HENRI-FREDERIC AMIEL
Journal Intime
The art which is grand and yet simple is that which presupposes the greatest elevation both in artist and in public.
HENRI-FREDERIC AMIEL
Journal Intime
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-FREDERIC AMIEL
Journal Intime
Great men are the true men, the men in whom Nature has succeeded. They are not extraordinary--they are in the true order. It is the other species of men who are not what they ought to be.
HENRI-FREDERIC AMIEL
Journal Intime
Clever men will recognize and tolerate nothing but cleverness.
HENRI-FREDERIC AMIEL
Journal Intime
Oh, order! Material order, intellectual order, moral order! What a comfort and strength, and what an economy! To know where we are going and what we want; that is order. To keep one's word, to do the right thing, and at the right time: more order. To have everything under one's hand, to put one's whole army through its manoeuvres, to work with all one's resources: still order. To discipline one's habits and efforts and wishes, to organize one's life and distribute one's time, to measure one's duties and assert one's rights, to put one's capital and resources, one's talents and opportunities to profit: again and always order. Order is light, peace, inner freedom, self-determination: it is power. To conceive order, to return to order, to realize order in oneself, around oneself, by means of oneself, this is aesthetic and moral beauty, it is well-being, it is what ought to be.
HENRI FREDERIC AMIEL
journal entry, January 27, 1860