Henri Frédéric Amiel (French: [amjɛl]; 27 September 1821 – 11 May 1881) was a Swiss moral philosopher, poet, and critic.
Unconsciousness, spontaneity, instinct. . . hold us to the earth and dictate the relatively good and useful.
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.
Nature does at least what she can to translate into visible form the wealth of the creative formula. By the vastness of the abysses into which she penetrates, in the effort--the unsuccessful effort--to house and contain the eternal thought, we may measure the greatness of the divine mind.
Love is faith and one faith leads to another.
True love is that which ennobles the personality, fortifies the heart, and sanctifies the existence.
Pay bad people with your goodness; fight their hatred with your kindness. Even if you do not achieve a victory over other people, you will conquer yourself.
The unfinished is nothing.
We become actors without realizing it, and actors without wanting to.
The soul may be immortal because she is fitted to rise towards that which is neither born nor dies, towards that which exists substantially, necessarily, invariably, that is to say towards God.
Life is but a daily oscillation between revolt and submission.
To shun one's cross is to make it heavier.
Criticism is above all a gift, an intuition, a matter of tact and flair; it cannot be taught or demonstrated--it is an art. Critical genius means an aptitude for discerning truth under appearances or in disguises which conceal it; for discovering it in spite of the errors of testimony, the frauds of tradition, the dust of time, the loss or alteration of texts. It is the sagacity of the hunter whom nothing deceives for long, and whom no ruse can throw off the trail.
Every man is a priest, even involuntarily; his conduct is an unspoken sermon, which is forever preaching to others.
Melancholy is at the bottom of everything, just as at the end of all rivers is the sea. Can it be otherwise in a world where nothing lasts, where all that we have loved or shall love must die? Is death, then, the secret of life? The gloom of an eternal mourning enwraps, more or less closely, every serious and thoughtful soul, as night enwraps the universe.
Everything you need for better future and success has already been written. And guess what? All you have to do is go to the library.
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.
Sympathy is the first condition of criticism.
Order means light and peace, inward liberty and free command over one's self; order is power.
Knowledge, love, power-there is the complete life.
Only evil grows of itself, while for goodness we want effort and courage.