Top 180 Henri-Frédéric Amiel Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “Life is short and we never have enough time for the hearts of those who travel the way with us. O, be swift to love! Make haste to be kind.”

— Henri-Frédéric Amiel

2. “I’m not interested in age. People who tell me their age are silly. You’re as old as you feel.”

— Henri-Frédéric Amiel

3. “There is no respect for others without humility in one’s self.”

— Henri-Frédéric Amiel

4. “He who is silent is forgotten; he who does not advance falls back; he who stops is overwhelmed; out distanced, crushed; he who ceases t grow becomes smaller; he who leaves off, gives up; the condition of standing still is the beginning of the end.”

— Henri-Frédéric Amiel

5. “Life is but a daily oscillation between revolt and submission.”

— Henri-Frédéric Amiel

6. “Destiny has two ways of crushing us – by refusing our wishes and by fulfilling them.”

— Henri-Frédéric Amiel

7. “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.”

— Henri-Frédéric Amiel

8. “Learn to limit yourself; to content yourself with some definite work; dare to be what you are and learn to resign with a good grace all that you are not; and to believe in your own individuality.”

— Henri-Frédéric Amiel

9. “Let mystery have its place in you ; do not be always turning up your whole soil with the ploughshare of self-examination, but leave a little fallow corner in your heart ready for any seed the winds may bring...”

— Henri-Frédéric Amiel

10. “Pay bad people with your goodness; fight their hatred with your kindness. Even if you do not achieve a victory over other people, you will conquer yourself.”

— Henri-Frédéric Amiel

11. “Life is short. Be swift to love! Make haste to be kind!”

— Henri-Frédéric Amiel

12. “The more a man loves, the more he suffers. The sum of possible grief for each soul is in proportion to its degree of perfection.”

— Henri-Frédéric Amiel

13. “Our duty is to be useful, not according to our desires but according to our powers.”

— Henri-Frédéric Amiel

14. “Learn to... be what you are, and learn to resign with a good grace all that you are not.”

— Henri-Frédéric Amiel

15. “So long as a person is capable of self-renewal they are a living being. -Henri.”

— Henri-Frédéric Amiel

16. “I do not deny the rights of democracy, but I have no illusions as to the uses that will be made of those rights so long as wisdom is rare and pride abundant.”

— Henri-Frédéric Amiel

17. “In every loving woman there is a priestess of the past – a pious guardian of some affection, of which the object has disappeared.”

— Henri-Frédéric Amiel

18. “Analysis kills spontaneity.”

— Henri-Frédéric Amiel

19. “Almost everything comes from almost nothing.”

— Henri-Frédéric Amiel

20. “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.”

— Henri-Frédéric Amiel

21. “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.”

— Henri-Frédéric Amiel

22. “True love is that which ennobles the personality, fortifies the heart, and sanctifies the existence.”

— Henri-Frédéric Amiel

23. “The great artist and thinker are the simplifiers.”

— Henri-Frédéric Amiel

24. “Time is but the space between our memories; as soon as we cease to perceive this space, time has disappeared.”

— Henri-Frédéric Amiel

25. “Without passion man is a mere latent force and possibility, like the flint which awaits the shock of the iron before it can give forth its spark.”

— Henri-Frédéric Amiel

26. “To learn new habits is everything, for it is to reach the substance of life. Life is but a tissue of habits.”

— Henri-Frédéric Amiel

27. “What governs men is the fear of truth.”

— Henri-Frédéric Amiel

28. “Time wasted is a theft from God.”

— Henri-Frédéric Amiel

29. “Civilization is first of all a moral thing. Without truth, respect for duty, love of neighbor, and virtue, everything is destroyed. The morality of a society is alone the basis of civilization.”

— Henri-Frédéric Amiel

Featured in: Firsts Quotes

30. “Every life is a profession of faith...”

— Henri-Frédéric Amiel

31. “We only understand that which already is within us.”

— Henri-Frédéric Amiel

32. “Dreams are excursions into the limbo of things, a semi-deliverance from the human prison.”

— Henri-Frédéric Amiel

33. “The growth and development of the soul is more important than power and glory.”

— Henri-Frédéric Amiel

34. “Oh be swift to live, make haste to be kind.”

— Henri-Frédéric Amiel

35. “The stationary condition is the beginning of the end.”

— Henri-Frédéric Amiel

36. “War is a brutal and fierce means of pacification; it means the suppression of resistance by the destruction or enslavement of the conquered.”

— Henri-Frédéric Amiel

37. “Truth is not only violated by falsehood; it may be equally outraged by silence.”

— Henri-Frédéric Amiel

38. “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.”

— Henri-Frédéric Amiel

39. “Every man is a priest, even involuntarily; his conduct is an unspoken sermon, which is forever preaching to others.”

— Henri-Frédéric Amiel

40. “Time and space are fragments of the infinite for the use of finite creatures.”

— Henri-Frédéric Amiel

41. “Self-interest is but the survival of the animal in us. Humanity only begins for man with self-surrender.”

— Henri-Frédéric Amiel

42. “Will localizes us, thought universalizes us.”

— Henri-Frédéric Amiel

43. “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.”

— Henri-Frédéric Amiel

44. “Charm is the quality in others that makes us more satisfied with ourselves.”

— Henri-Frédéric Amiel

45. “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

46. “Knowledge, love, power-there is the complete life.”

— Henri-Frédéric Amiel

47. “Every situation is an equilibrium of forces; every life is a struggle between opposing forces working within the limits of a certain equilibrium.”

— Henri-Frédéric Amiel

48. “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

49. “A belief is not true simply because it is useful.”

— Henri-Frédéric Amiel

50. “Kindness is gladdening the hearts of those who are traveling the dark journey with us.”

— Henri-Frédéric Amiel