Quote

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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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
Genius
Filter
Needed
Limiting
Force
Filters
History
Supply
Ideas
Passive
Men
Substance
Critical
Supplied
Mass
Modification

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Heroism is the brilliant triumph of the soul over the flesh - over fear...Heroism is the dazzling and glorious concentration of courage.
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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.
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To do what is impossible for talent is the mark of genius.
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If nationality is consent, the state is compulsion.
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For purposes of action nothing is more useful than narrowness of thought combined with energy of will.
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Man becomes man only by his intelligence, but he is man only by his heart.
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There is no respect for others without humility in one's self.
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Dreams are excursions into the limbo of things, a semi-deliverance from the human prison.
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A modest garden contains, for those who know how to look and to wait, more instruction than a library.
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To understand is to possess the thing understood, first by sympathy and then by intelligence.
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To learn new habits is everything, for it is to reach the substance of life. Life is but a tissue of habits.
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From every spot on earth we are equally near heaven and the infinite.
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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.
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You desire to know the art of living, my friend? It is contained in one phrase: make use of suffering.
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True love is that which ennobles the personality, fortifies the heart, and sanctifies the existence.
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Everything you need for better future and success has already been written. And guess what? All you have to do is go to the library.
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The immense majority of our species are candidates for humanity, and nothing more.
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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.
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Every man is a priest, even involuntarily his conduct is an unspoken sermon, which is forever preaching to others.
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Clever people will recognize and tolerate nothing but cleverness.
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