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The ideal, after all, is true than the real: for the ideal is the eternal element in perishable things.
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
Things
Idealism
Element
Ideal
Ideals
Elements
Eternal
True
Real
Perishable
More quotes by Henri Frederic Amiel
Man never knows what he wants he aspires to penetrate mysteries and as soon as he has, wants to re-establish them. Ignorance irritates him and knowledge cloys.
Henri Frederic Amiel
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
True humility is contentment.
Henri Frederic Amiel
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
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
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
Truth above all, even when it upsets us and overwhelms us.
Henri Frederic Amiel
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
To marry unequally is to suffer equally.
Henri Frederic Amiel
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 Frederic Amiel
Self-interest is an inexhaustible source of convenient illusions. The number of beings who wish to see truly is extraordinarily small.
Henri Frederic Amiel
To know where one is going and what one wishes - this is order ... to organize one's life to distribute one's time ... all this belong to and is included in the word order.
Henri Frederic Amiel
[T]he habit of scientific analysis ... exhausts the material offered to it.
Henri Frederic Amiel
Self-interest is but the survival of the animal in us. Humanity only begins for man with self-surrender.
Henri Frederic Amiel
We are never more discontented with others than when we are discontented with ourselves. The consciousness of wrong-doing makes us irritable, and our heart, in its cunning, quarrels with what is outside it, in order that it may deafen the clamor within.
Henri Frederic Amiel
Unconsciousness, spontaneity, instinct ... hold us to the earth and dictate the relatively good and useful.
Henri Frederic Amiel
I am a spectator, so to speak, of the molecular whirlwind which men call individual life I am conscious of an incessant metamorphosis, an irresistible movement of existence, which is going on within me - and this phenomenology of myself serves as a window opened upon the mystery of the world.
Henri Frederic Amiel
What governs men is the fear of truth.
Henri Frederic Amiel
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
The immense majority of our species are candidates for humanity, and nothing more.
Henri Frederic Amiel
