Henri Frederic Amiel
Henri Frederic Amiel
Henri Frédéric Amielwas a Swiss moral philosopher, poet, and critic...
NationalitySwiss
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth27 September 1821
CountrySwitzerland
kindness giving effort
It would have been a joy to me to be smiled upon, loved, encouraged, welcomed, and to obtain what I was so ready to give, kindness and goodwill. But to hunt down consideration and reputation -- to force the esteem of others -- seemed to me an effort unworthy of myself, almost a degradation.
race may weakness
Whatever impatience we may feel towards our neighbor, and whatever indignation our race may rouse in us, we are chained one to another, and, companions in labour and misfortune, have everything to lose by mutual recrimination and reproach. Let us be silent as to each other's weakness, helpful, tolerant, many, tender towards each other! Or, if we cannot feel tenderness, may we at least feel pity!
views giving judging
It gives liberty and breadth to thought, to learn to judge our own epoch from the point of view of universal history, history from the point of view of geological periods, geology from the point of view of astronomy.
men ideas substance
Men of genius supply the substance of history, while the mass of men are but the critical filter, the limiting, slackening, passive force needed for the modification of ideas supplied by genius.
hero heart different
The germs of all things are in every heart, and the greatest criminals as well as the greatest heroes are but different modes of ourselves.
law whole
The laws of animality govern almost the whole of history.
impossible
As it is impossible to be outside God, the best is consciously to dwell in Him.
morning too-late ears
The tragic solemnity of existence strikes us with terrible force on that morning when we wake to find the mournful words "too late" ringing in our ears.
art simple artist
The art which is grand and yet simple is that which presupposes the greatest elevation both in artist and in public.
quitting unfinished
The unfinished is nothing.
order needs great-person
Order is a great person's need and their true well being.
men self might
At the bottom of the modern man there is always a great thirst for self-forgetfulness, self-distraction . . . and therefore he turns away from all those problems and abysses which might recall to him his own nothingness.
beautiful art kindness
The beautiful souls of the world have an art of saintly alchemy, by which bitterness is converted into kindness, the gall of human experience into gentleness, ingratitude into benefits, insults into pardon.
understanding firsts understood
To understand is to possess the thing understood, first by sympathy and then by intelligence.