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We only understand that which already is within us.

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
Already
Within
Understand

More quotes by Henri Frederic Amiel

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Philosophy means the complete liberty of the mind.
Henri Frederic Amiel
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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 Frederic Amiel
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Doing easily what others find difficult is talent doing what is impossible for talent is genius.
Henri Frederic Amiel
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[I]t is truth alone-scientific, established, proved, and rational truth-which is capable of satisfying nowadays the awakened minds of all classes. We may still say perhaps, 'faith governs the world,'-but the faith of the present is no longer in revelation or in the priest-it is in reason and in science.
Henri Frederic Amiel
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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 Frederic Amiel
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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 Frederic Amiel
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True humility is contentment.
Henri Frederic Amiel
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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 Frederic Amiel
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Happiness has no limits, because God has neither bottom nor bounds, and because happiness is nothing but the conquest of God through love.
Henri Frederic Amiel
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It would have been a joy to me to be smiled upon, loved, encouraged, welcomed, and to obtain what I was so ready to give, kindness and goodwill. But to hunt down consideration and reputation - to force the esteem of others - seemed to me an effort unworthy of myself, almost a degradation.
Henri Frederic Amiel
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Men of genius supply the substance of history, while the mass of men are but the critical filter, the limiting, slackening, passive force needed for the modification of ideas supplied by genius.
Henri Frederic Amiel
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Joy is the vital air of the soul.
Henri Frederic Amiel
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Put personal ambition away from you, and then you will find consolation in living or in dying, whatever may happen to you.
Henri Frederic Amiel
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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.
Henri Frederic Amiel
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Common sense is the measure of the possible it is composed of experience and prevision it is calculation applied to life.
Henri Frederic Amiel
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From every spot on earth we are equally near heaven and the infinite.
Henri Frederic Amiel
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To do what is impossible for talent is the mark of genius.
Henri Frederic Amiel
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At bottom there is but one subject of study: the forms and metamorphoses of mind. All other subjects may be reduced to that all other studies bring us back to this study.
Henri Frederic Amiel
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For purposes of action nothing is more useful than narrowness of thought combined with energy of will.
Henri Frederic Amiel
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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.
Henri Frederic Amiel