Henri Frederic Amiel
Henri Frederic Amiel
Henri Frédéric Amielwas a Swiss moral philosopher, poet, and critic...
NationalitySwiss
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth27 September 1821
CountrySwitzerland
sympathy criticism firsts
Sympathy is the first condition of criticism.
powerful moving men
He who floats with the current, who does not guide himself according to higher principles, who has no ideal, no convictions-such a man is . . . a thing moved, instead of a living and moving being-an echo, not a voice. The man who has no inner-life is a slave of his surroundings as the barometer is the obedient servant of the air.
dream deliverance prison
Dreams are excursions into the limbo of things, a semi-deliverance from the human prison.
nature soul landscape
Every landscape is, as it were, a state of the soul, and whoever penetrates into both is astonished to find how much likeness there is in each detail.
christian order grace
In order to see Christianity, one must forget all the Christians.
grief recovery self
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.
past priestesses pious
In every loving woman there is a priestess of the past
philosophical able phantoms
A microscopic phantom of the universe; this is all that we are able to be.
happiness giving energy
Happiness gives us the energy which is the basis of health.
morning health rose
To feel keenly the poetry of a morning's roses, one has to have just escaped from the claws of this vulture which we call sickness.
kindness hate way
There is only one way of not hating those who do us wrong, and that is by doing them good.
mean diversity guilt
Righteous ends, thus approved, absolve of guilt the most violent means.
thoughtful night sea
Melancholy is at the bottom of everything, just as at the end of all rivers is the sea. Can it be otherwise in a world where nothing lasts, where all that we have loved or shall love must die? Is death, then, the secret of life? The gloom of an eternal mourning enwraps, more or less closely, every serious and thoughtful soul, as night enwraps the universe.
ignorance passion class
If ignorance and passion are the foes of popular morality, it must be confessed that moral indifference is the malady of the cultivated classes.