Quotes from Henri-Frédéric Amiel

Philosophy means the complete liberty of the mind.

It is not what he has, nor even what he does, which directly expresses the worth of a man, but what he is.

Uncertainty is the refuge of hope.

To know how to suggest is the art of teaching.

Life is short and we have never too much time for gladdening the hearts of those who are travelling the dark journey with us. Oh be swift to love, make haste to be kind.

Action is coarsened thought; thought becomes concrete, obscure, and unconscious.

Common sense is calculation applied to life.

Great men are 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.

Learn to limit yourself, to content yourself with some definite thing, and some definite work; dare to be what you are, and learn to resign with a good grace all that you are not and to believe in your own individuality.

Liberty, equality - bad principles! The only true principle for humanity is justice; and justice to the feeble is protection and kindness.

Mozart has the classic purity of light and the blue ocean; Beethoven the romantic grandeur which belongs to the storms of air and sea, and while the soul of Mozart seems to dwell on the ethereal peaks of Olympus, that of Beethoven climbs shuddering the storm-beaten sides of a Sinai. Blessed be they both! Each represents a moment of the ideal life, each does us good. Our love is due to both.

Self-interest is but the survival of the animal in us. Humanity only begins for man with self-surrender.

Tears are the symbol of the inability of the soul to restrain its emotion and retain its self command.

The best path through life is the highway.

The obscure only exists that it may cease to exist. In it lies the opportunity of all victory and all progress. Whether it call itself fatality, death, night, or matter, it is the pedestal of life, of light, of liberty and the spirit. For it represents resistance -- that is to say, the fulcrum of all activity, the occasion for its development and its triumph.

Truth is the secret of eloquence and of virtue, the basis of moral authority; it is the highest summit of art and life.

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

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.

A belief is not true because it is useful.

Heroism is the dazzling and glorious concentration of courage.

Action is but coarsened thought; thought become concrete, obscure, and unconscious.

We are hemmed round with mystery, and the greatest mysteries are contained in what we see and do every day.

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.

The immense majority of our species are candidates for humanity, and nothing more.