Quotes from Henri-Frédéric Amiel

Life is short and we never have enough time for the hearts of those who travel the way with us. O, be swift to love!

A bubble of air in the blood, a drop of water in the brain, and a man is out of gear, his machine falls to pieces, his thought vanishes, the world disappears from him like a dream at morning. On what a spider thread is hung our individual existence!

Before crime is committed conscience must be corrupted, and every bad man who succeeds in reaching a high point of wickedness begins with this.

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

The ideal, after all, is true than the real: for the ideal is the eternal element in perishable things.

There is no repose for the mind except in the absolute; for feeling except in the infinite; for the soul except in the divine.

There is nothing non-exclusive but the All; my end is communion with Being through the whole of Being.

Woman is the salvation or destruction of the family. She carries its destinies in the folds of her mantle.

Joy is the vital air of the soul.

I wonder whether I should gain anything by the attempt to assume a character which is not mine. My wavering manner, born of doubt and scruple, has at least the advantage of rendering all the different shades of my thought, and of being sincere. If it were to become terse, affirmative, resolute, would it not be a mere imitation?

As it is impossible to be outside God, the best is consciously to dwell in Him.

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.

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.

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.

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.

A musical theme once exhausted, finds its due refuge and repose in silence.

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

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.

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.

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.

The art which is grand and yet simple is that which presupposes the greatest elevation both in artist and in public.

Each man enters into God so much as God enters into him.

I am a spectator, so to speak, of the molecular whirlwind which men call individual life; I am conscious of an incessant metamorphosis, an irresistible movement of existence, which is going on within me -- and this phenomenology of myself serves as a window opened upon the mystery of the world.

The musician of the present day, not being able to give us what is beautiful, torments himself to give us what is new.