A man must be able to cut a knot, for everything cannot be untied; he must know how to disengage what is essential from the detail in which it is enwrapped, for everything cannot be equally considered; in a word, he must be able to simplify his duties, his business and his life.

— Henri-Frédéric Amiel

Henri-Frédéric Amiel Quotes

We are always making God our accomplice, that so we may legalize our own iniquities. Every successful massacre is consecrated by a Te Deum, and the clergy have never been wanting in benedictions for any victorious enormity.

— Henri-Frédéric Amiel

Sadness takes up the pen more readily than joy.

— Henri-Frédéric Amiel

There is no repose for the mind except in the absolute; for feeling, except in the infinite; for the soul, except in the divine.

— Henri-Frédéric Amiel

What we call little things are merely the causes of great things.

— Henri-Frédéric Amiel

When everything is in its right place within us, we ourselves are in balance with the whole work of God.

— Henri-Frédéric Amiel

Time wasted is a theft from God.

— Henri-Frédéric Amiel

Life is but a daily oscillation between revolt and submission.

— Henri-Frédéric Amiel

Knowledge, love, power-there is the complete life.

— Henri-Frédéric Amiel

Obstinacy is will asserting itself without being able to justify itself. It is persistence without a reasonable motive. It is the tenacity of self-love substituted for that of reason and conscience.

— Henri-Frédéric Amiel

If ignorance and passion are the foes of popular morality, it must be confessed that moral indifference is the malady of the cultivated classes.

— Henri-Frédéric Amiel

Great men are the real men, in them nature has succeeded.

— Henri-Frédéric Amiel

Nothing resembles pride so much as discouragement.

— Henri-Frédéric Amiel

What governs men is the fear of truth.

— Henri-Frédéric Amiel

Life alone can rekindle life.

— Henri-Frédéric Amiel

How true it is that our destinies are decided by nothings and that a small imprudence helped by some insignificant accident, as an acorn is fertilized by a drop of rain, may raise the trees on which perhaps we and others shall be crucified.

— Henri-Frédéric Amiel

A thousand things advance; nine hundred and ninety nine retreat; That is progress.

— Henri-Frédéric Amiel

What we call little things are merely the causes of great things; they are the beginning, the embryo, and it is the point of departure which, generally speaking, decides the whole future of an existence. One single black speck may be the beginning of gangrene, of a storm, of a revolution.

— Henri-Frédéric Amiel

I find myself regarding existence as though from beyond the tomb, from another world; all is strange to me; I am, as it were, outside my own body and individuality; I am depersonalized, detached, cut adrift. Is this madness?

— Henri-Frédéric Amiel

It is dangerous to abandon one’s self to the luxury of grief; it deprives one of courage, and even of the wish for recovery.

— Henri-Frédéric Amiel

Habits count for more than maxims, because habit is a living maxim, becomes flesh and instinct. To reform one’s maxims is nothing: it is but to change the title of the book.

— Henri-Frédéric Amiel

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