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.

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

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.

The man who insists upon seeing with perfect clearness before he decides, never decides. Accept life, and you must accept regret.

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.

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

Blessed be childhood, which brings down something of heaven into the midst of our rough earthliness.

Society lives by faith, and develops by science.

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

Tell me what you feel in your room when the full moon is shining in upon you and your lamp is dying out, and I will tell you how old you are, and I shall know if you are happy.

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.

Sacrifice, which is the passion of great souls, has never been the law of societies.

The test of every religious, political, or educational system is the man that it forms.

Music is harmony, harmony is perfection, perfection is our dream, and our dream is heaven.

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

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.

Action and faith enslave thought, both of them in order not be troubled or inconvenienced by reflection, criticism, and doubt.

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

Every life is a profession of faith, and exercises an inevitable and silent influence.

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

Learn to... be what you are, and learn to resign with a good grace all that you are not.

Man becomes man only by his intelligence, but he is man only by his heart.

Thought is a kind of opium; it can intoxicate us, while still broad awake; it can make transparent the mountains and everything that exists.

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.

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

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.

If nationality is consent, the state is compulsion.

The fire which enlightens is the same fire which consumes.