Henri Frédéric Amiel (French: [amjɛl]; 27 September 1821 – 11 May 1881) was a Swiss moral philosopher, poet, and critic.
Men of genius supply the substance of history, while the mass of men are but the critical filter, the limiting, slackening, passive force needed for the modification of ideas supplied by genius.
Our greatest illusion is to believe that we are what we think ourselves to be.
The man who insists upon seeing with perfect clearness before he decides, never decides. Accept life, and you must accept regret.
True poetry is truer than science, because it is synthetic, and seizes at once what the combination of all the sciences is able, at most, to attain as a final result.
Whenever conscience speaks with a divided, uncertain, and disputed voice, it is not the voice of God. Descend still deeper into yourself, until you hear nothing but a clear, undivided voice, a voice which does away with doubt and brings with it persuasion, light, and serenity.
So long as a person is capable of self-renewal they are a living being. -Henri
I find myself regarding existence as though from beyond the tomb, from another world; all is strange to me; I am, as it were, outside my own body and individuality; I am depersonalized, detached, cut adrift. Is this madness?
The ideal, after all, is true than the real: for the ideal is the eternal element in perishable things.
Righteous ends, thus approved, absolve of guilt the most violent means.
When everything has its proper place in our minds, we are able to stand in equilibrium with the rest of the world.
Time wasted is a theft from God.
Our dependence outweighs our independence, for we are independent only in our desire, while we are dependent on our health, on nature, on society, on everything in us and outside us.
Every living being seeks instinctively to complete itself.
Women wish to be loved without a why or a wherefore; not because they are pretty, or good, or well-bred, or graceful, or intelligent, but because they are themselves.
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.
Wisdom consists in rising superior both to madness and to common sense, and is lending oneself to the universal illusion without becoming its dupe.
Let mystery have its place in you ; do not be always turning up your whole soil with the ploughshare of self-examination, but leave a little fallow corner in your heart ready for any seed the winds may bring.
Sadness takes up the pen more readily than joy.
Happiness has no limits, because God has neither bottom nor bounds, and because happiness is nothing but the conquest of God through love.
The efficacy of religion lies precisely in what is not rational, philosophic, nor eternal; its efficacy lies in the unforeseen, the miraculous, the extraordinary. Thus religion attracts more devotion according as it demands more faith - that is to say, as it becomes more incredible to the profane mind.