Quote

The tragic solemnity of existence strikes us with terrible force on that morning when we wake to find the mournful words too late ringing in our ears.

Henri Frederic Amiel

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Late
Terrible
Mournful
Existence
Solemnity
Morning
Ringing
Words
Tragic
Force
Strikes
Find
Wake
Ears

More quotes by Henri Frederic Amiel

Image
Self-interest is an inexhaustible source of convenient illusions. The number of beings who wish to see truly is extraordinarily small.
Henri Frederic Amiel
Image
The man who insists upon seeing with perfect clearness before he decides, never decides. Accept life, and you must accept regret.
Henri Frederic Amiel
Image
To depersonalize man is the dominant drift of our times.
Henri Frederic Amiel
Image
Truth above all, even when it upsets us and overwhelms us.
Henri Frederic Amiel
Image
A man without passion is only a latent force, only a possibility, like a stone waiting for the blow from the iron to give forth sparks.
Henri Frederic Amiel
Image
I'm not interested in age. People who tell me their age are silly. You're as old as you feel.
Henri Frederic Amiel
Image
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
Image
Doing easily what others find difficult is talent doing what is impossible for talent is genius.
Henri Frederic Amiel
Image
Man is saved by love and duty, and by the hope that springs from duty, or rather from the moral facts of consciousness, as a flower springs from the soil.
Henri Frederic Amiel
Image
To do what is impossible for talent is the mark of genius.
Henri Frederic Amiel
Image
Women wish to be loved without a why or a wherefore not because they are pretty, or good, or well-bred, or graceful, or intelligent, but because they are themselves.
Henri Frederic Amiel
Image
Common sense is the measure of the possible it is composed of experience and prevision it is calculation applied to life.
Henri Frederic Amiel
Image
We only understand that which already is within us.
Henri Frederic Amiel
Image
An error is the more dangerous in proportion to the degree of truth which it contains.
Henri Frederic Amiel
Image
Our systems, perhaps, are nothing more than an unconscious apology for our faults, a gigantic scaffolding whose object is to hide from us our favorite sin.
Henri Frederic Amiel
Image
Life is an apprenticeship to the constant renunciations, to the steady failure of our claims, our hopes, our powers, our liberty.
Henri Frederic Amiel
Image
To understand is to possess the thing understood, first by sympathy and then by intelligence.
Henri Frederic Amiel
Image
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 Frederic Amiel
Image
A man only understands what is akin to something already existing in himself.
Henri Frederic Amiel
Image
A thousand things advance nine hundred and ninety nine retreat That is progress.
Henri Frederic Amiel