Quotes By Henri Frederic Amiel

The only substance properly so called is the soul.

There is no respect for others without humility in one's self.

Common sense is calculation applied to life.

Materialism coarsens and petrifies everything, making everything vulgar, and every truth false.

Uncertainty is the refuge of hope.

Order is power.

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

It is not what he had, or even what he does which expresses the worth of a man, but what he is.

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

Any landscape is a condition of the spirit.

Destiny has two ways of crushing us - by refusing our wishes and by fulfilling them.

The fire which enlightens is the same fire which consumes.

For purposes of action nothing is more useful than narrowness of thought combined with energy of will.

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.

To know how to suggest is the great art of teaching. To attain it we must be able to guess what will interest; we must learn to read the childish soul as we might a piece of music. Then, by simply changing the key, we keep up the attraction and vary the song.

To live we must conquer incessantly, we must have the courage to be happy.

True humility is contentment.

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

Common sense is the measure of the possible; it is composed of experience and prevision; it is calculation applied to life.

To marry unequally is to suffer equally.

In every loving woman there is a priestess of the past - a pious guardian of some affection, of which the object has disappeared.

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

Order is a great person's need and their true well being.

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

Society lives by faith, and develops by science.

In health there is freedom. Health is the first of all liberties.

It is by teaching that we teach ourselves, by relating that we observe, by affirming that we examine, by showing that we look, by writing that we think, by pumping that we draw water into the well.

Sympathy is the first condition of criticism.

Analysis kills spontaneity. The grain once ground into flour springs and germinates no more.

We only understand that which already is within us.