Henri Frederic Amiel
Henri Frederic Amiel
Henri Frédéric Amielwas a Swiss moral philosopher, poet, and critic...
NationalitySwiss
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth27 September 1821
CountrySwitzerland
beautiful angel men
The history of man is essentially zoological; it becomes human late in the day, and then only in the beautiful souls, the souls alive to justice, goodness, enthusiasm, and devotion. The angel shows itself rarely and with difficulty through the highly-organized brute.
art mean loss
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.
men wickedness succeed
Before crime is committed conscience must be corrupted, and every bad man who succeeds in reaching a high point of wickedness begins with this.
kindness compassion justice
Liberty, equality - bad principles! The only true principle for humanity is justice; and justice to the feeble is protection and kindness.
war mean resistance
War is a brutal and fierce means of pacification; it means the suppression of resistance by the destruction or enslavement of the conquered.
ambition dying may
Put personal ambition away from you, and then you will find consolation in living or in dying, whatever may happen to you.
pain writing giving
Composition is a process of combination, in which thought puts together complementary truths, and talent fuses into harmony the most contrary qualities of style. So that there is no composition without effort, without pain even, as in all bringing forth. The reward is the giving birth to something living--something, that is to say, which, by a kind of magic, makes a living unity out of such opposed attributes as orderliness and spontaneity, thought and imagination, solidity and charm.
believe men sick
The great majority of men are but tangled skeins, imperfect keyboards, so many specimens of restless or stagnant chaos--and what makes their situation almost hopeless is the fact that they take pleasure in it. There is no curing a sick man who believes himself in health.
heart rivers issues
I can find no words for what I feel. My consciousness is withdrawn into itself; I hear my heart beating, and my life passing. It seems to me that I have become a statue on the banks of the river of time, that I am the spectator of some mystery, and shall issue from it old, or no longer capable of age.
beautiful giving able
The musician of the present day, not being able to give us what is beautiful, torments himself to give us what is new.
love-is men secret
To be misunderstood even by those whom one loves is the cross and bitterness of life. It is the secret of that sad and melancholy smile on the lips of great men which so few understand.
mind may study
At bottom there is but one subject of study: the forms and metamorphoses of mind. All other subjects may be reduced to that; all other studies bring us back to this study.
flower garden perfect
Each bud flowers but once and each flower has but its minute of perfect beauty; so, in the garden of the soul each feeling has, as it were, its flowering instant, its one and only moment of expansive grace and radiant kingship.
character doubt different
I wonder whether I should gain anything by the attempt to assume a character which is not mine. My wavering manner, born of doubt and scruple, has at least the advantage of rendering all the different shades of my thought, and of being sincere. If it were to become terse, affirmative, resolute, would it not be a mere imitation?