Quote

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 Frederic Amiel

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Henri Frederic Amiel
Age: 59 †
Born: 1821
Born: September 27
Died: 1881
Died: May 11
Diarist
Literary Critic
Philosopher
Poet
Translator
University Teacher
Writer
Genève
Henri-Frederic Amiel
Henri Frédéric Amiel
World
Cutting
Adrift
Beyond
Tomb
Strange
Tombs
Existence
Detached
Though
Regarding
Another
Individuality
Body
Madness
Find
Outside

More quotes by Henri Frederic Amiel

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Time is but the measure of the difficulty of a conception. Pure thought has scarcely any need of time, since it perceives the two ends of an idea almost at the same moment.
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The fire which enlightens is the same fire which consumes.
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Our dependence outweighs our independence, for we are independent only in our desire, while we are dependent on our health, on nature, on society, on everything in us and outside us.
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In every loving woman there is a priestess of the past
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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 Frederic Amiel
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Hope is only the love of life.
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Liberty, equality - bad principles! The only true principle for humanity is justice and justice to the feeble is protection and kindness.
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Latent genius is but a presumption. Everything that can be, is bound to come into being, and what never comes into being is nothing.
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The laws of animality govern almost the whole of history.
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To understand is to possess the thing understood, first by sympathy and then by intelligence.
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Music is harmony, harmony is perfection, perfection is our dream, and our dream is heaven.
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There is an illusion of central position, justifying one's own purposes as right and everybody else¹s as wrong, and providing a proper degree of paranoia. Righteous ends, thus approved, absolve of guilt the most violent means.
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To depersonalize man is the dominant drift of our times.
Henri Frederic Amiel
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The only substance properly so called is the soul.
Henri Frederic Amiel
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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 Frederic Amiel
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When everything is in its right place within us, we ourselves are in balance with the whole work of God.
Henri Frederic Amiel
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Unconsciousness, spontaneity, instinct ... hold us to the earth and dictate the relatively good and useful.
Henri Frederic Amiel
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Whenever conscience speaks with a divided, uncertain, and disputed voice, it is not the voice of God. Descend still deeper into yourself, until you hear nothing but a clear, undivided voice, a voice which does away with doubt and brings with it persuasion, light, and serenity.
Henri Frederic Amiel
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Philosophy means the complete liberty of the mind.
Henri Frederic Amiel
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The spirit of sarcasm lives and thrives in the midst of universal wreck its balls are enchanted and itself invulnerable, and it braves retaliations and reprisals because itself is a mere flash, a bodiless and magical nothing.
Henri Frederic Amiel