Henri-Frédéric Amiel

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.

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

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

all appears to change when we change

Without passion man is a mere latent force and possibility, like the flint which awaits the shock of the iron before it can give forth its spark.

Our duty is to be useful, not according to our desires but according to our powers.

I begin to realize that my memory is a great catacomb, and that below my actual standing-ground there is layer after layer of historical ashes. Is the life of mind something like that of great trees of immemorial growth? Is the living layer of consciousness super-imposed upon hundreds of dead layers? Dead? No doubt this is too much to say, but still, when memory is slack the past becomes almost as though it had never been. To remember that we did know once is not a sign of possession but a sign of loss; it is like the number of an engraving which is no longer on its nail, the title of a volume no longer to be found on its shelf. My mind is the empty frame of a thousand vanished images.

Philosophy means the complete liberty of the mind.

Conquering any difficulty always gives one a secret joy, for it means pushing back a boundary line and adding to one's liberty.

To know how to suggest is the art of teaching.

A belief is not true because it is useful

The stationary condition is the beginning of the end

Any landscape is a condition of the spirit.

A journal takes the place of a confidant, that is, of friend or wife; it becomes a substitute for production, a substitute for country and public. It is a grief-cheating device, a mode of escape and withdrawal; but, factotum as it is, though it takes the place of everything, properly speaking it represents nothing at all...

Hindoo wisdom long ago regarded the world as the dream of Brahma. Must we hold with Fichte that it is the individual dream of each individual ego? Every fool would then be a cosmogonic poet producing the firework of the universe under the dome of the infinite.

I'm not interested in age. People who tell me their age are silly. You're as old as you feel.

Sacrifice still exists everywhere, and everywhere the elect of each generation suffers for the salvation of the rest.

Uncertainty is the refuge of hope.