Henri Frederic Amiel
Henri Frederic Amiel
Henri Frédéric Amielwas a Swiss moral philosopher, poet, and critic...
NationalitySwiss
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth27 September 1821
CountrySwitzerland
country cheating grief
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...
memories space perceive
Time is but the space between our memories; as soon as we cease to perceive this space, time has disappeared.
judging
What we do not understand we have no right to judge
justice criticism firsts
Sympathy is the first condition of criticism; reason and justice presuppose, at their origin, emotion.
disappointment drama writing
Our true history is scarcely ever deciphered by others. The chief part of the drama is a monologue, or rather an intimate debate between God, our conscience, and ourselves. Tears, grieves, depressions, disappointments, irritations, good and evil thoughts, decisions, uncertainties, deliberations --all these belong to our secret, and are almost all incommunicable and intransmissible, even when we try to speak of them, and even when we write them down.
respect men our-time
To depersonalize man is the dominant drift of our times.
philosophical race together
Are we not all shipwrecked,...condemned to death?... However impatient our neighbours make us, however much indignation our race arouses, we are all bound together, and the companions of a chain-gang have everything to lose by mutual insults...
lying opportunity night
The obscure only exists that it may cease to exist. In it lies the opportunity of all victory and all progress. Whether it call itself fatality, death, night, or matter, it is the pedestal of life, of light, of liberty and the spirit. For it represents resistance -- that is to say, the fulcrum of all activity, the occasion for its development and its triumph.
work giving flavor
It is work which gives flavor to life.
heaven suffering earth
Do not despise your situation; in it you must act, suffer, and conquer. From every point on earth we are equally near to heaven and to the infinite.
men forever priests
Every man is a priest, even involuntarily; his conduct is an unspoken sermon, which is forever preaching to others.
jesus believe
About Jesus we must believe no one but himself.
believe thinking illusion
Our greatest illusion is to believe that we are what we think ourselves to be.
earth littles slipping
How, then, find the courage for action? By slipping a little into unconsciousness, spontaneity, instinct which holds one to the earth and dictates the relatively good and useful. By accepting the human condition more simply, and candidly, by dreading troubles less, calculating less, hoping more.