Quotes from Henri Frederic Amiel

To know where one is going and what one wishes - this is order ... to organize one's life to distribute one's time ... all this belong to and is included in the word order.

To shun one's cross is to make it heavier.

Charm is the quality in others that makes us more satisfied with ourselves.

To depersonalize man is the dominant drift of our times.

Happiness gives us the energy which is the basis of health.

Never to tire, never to grow cold; to be patient, sympathetic, tender; to look for the budding flower and the opening heart; to hope always; like God, to love always--this is duty.

It is by teaching that we teach ourselves, by relating that we observe, by affirming that we examine, by showing that we look, by writing that we think, by pumping that we draw water into the well.

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.

Love is faith and one faith leads to another.

Civilization is first of all a moral thing. Without truth, respect for duty, love of neighbor, and virtue, everything is destroyed. The morality of a society is alone the basis of civilization.

Obstinacy is will asserting itself without being able to justify itself. It is persistence without a reasonable motive. It is the tenacity of self-love substituted for that of reason and conscience.

Thought is a kind of opium; it can intoxicate us, while still broad awake; it can make transparent the mountains and everything that exists.

Philosophy means the complete liberty of the mind, and therefore independence of all social, political or religious prejudice... It loves one thing only... truth.

Philosophy starts with doubt and loves only truth.

Let us be true: this is the highest maxim of art and of life, the secret of eloquence and of virtue, and of all moral authority.

An error is the more dangerous in proportion to the degree of truth which it contains.

Truth above all, even when it upsets us and overwhelms us.

Pure truth cannot be assimilated by the crowd it must be communicated by contagion.

Truth is not only violated by falsehood it may be equally outraged by silence.

Knowledge, love, power-there is the complete life.

Doubt of the reality of love ends by making us doubt everything.

Happiness has no limits, because God has neither bottom nor bounds, and because happiness is nothing but the conquest of God through love.

Only evil grows of itself, while for goodness we want effort and courage.

True humility is contentment.