Henri Frederic Amiel
Life is short and we have never too much time for gladdening the hearts of those who are travelling the dark journey with us. Oh be swift to love, make haste to be kind.Collection: Time
To marry unequally is to suffer equally.Collection: Relationship
Truth is not only violated by falsehood; it may be equally outraged by silence.Collection: Truth
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.Collection: Good
Man becomes man only by his intelligence, but he is man only by his heart.Collection: Fathers
Society lives by faith, and develops by science.Collection: Society
Learn to... be what you are, and learn to resign with a good grace all that you are not.Collection: Good
Destiny has two ways of crushing us - by refusing our wishes and by fulfilling them.Collection: Future
Thankfulness is the beginning of gratitude. Gratitude is the completion of thankfulness. Thankfulness may consist merely of words. Gratitude is shown in acts.Collection: Thankful
True humility is contentment.Collection: Peace
In health there is freedom. Health is the first of all liberties.Collection: Health
Order is power.Collection: Power
Materialism coarsens and petrifies everything, making everything vulgar, and every truth false.Collection: Truth
There is no respect for others without humility in one's self.Collection: Respect
The man who has no inner-life is a slave to his surroundings.Collection: Life
Tell me what you feel in your room when the full moon is shining in upon you and your lamp is dying out, and I will tell you how old you are, and I shall know if you are happy.Collection: Happiness
Uncertainty is the refuge of hope.Collection: Hope
Action and faith enslave thought, both of them in order not be troubled or inconvenienced by reflection, criticism, and doubt.Collection: Faith
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.Collection: Future
To know how to suggest is the great art of teaching. To attain it we must be able to guess what will interest; we must learn to read the childish soul as we might a piece of music. Then, by simply changing the key, we keep up the attraction and vary the song.Collection: Music
The best path through life is the highway.Collection: Life
I'm not interested in age. People who tell me their age are silly. You're as old as you feel.Collection: Age
Pure truth cannot be assimilated by the crowd; it must be communicated by contagion.Collection: Communication
It is by teaching that we teach ourselves, by relating that we observe, by affirming that we examine, by showing that we look, by writing that we think, by pumping that we draw water into the well.Collection: Teacher
Sympathy is the first condition of criticism.Collection: Sympathy
To live we must conquer incessantly, we must have the courage to be happy.Collection: Courage
Common sense is calculation applied to life.
Work while you have the light. You are responsible for the talent that has been entrusted to you.
Any landscape is a condition of the spirit.
To do easily what is difficult for others is the mark of talent. To do what is impossible for talent is the mark of genius.
The man who insists upon seeing with perfect clearness before he decides, never decides. Accept life, and you must accept regret.
Cleverness is serviceable for everything, sufficient for nothing.
Clever people will recognize and tolerate nothing but cleverness.
Every life is a profession of faith, and exercises an inevitable and silent influence.
Our duty is to be useful, not according to our desires but according to our powers.
Analysis kills spontaneity. The grain once ground into flour springs and germinates no more.
The test of every religious, political, or educational system is the man that it forms.
In every loving woman there is a priestess of the past - a pious guardian of some affection, of which the object has disappeared.
So long as a person is capable of self-renewal they are a living being.
We are never more discontented with others than when we are discontented with ourselves.
Self-interest is but the survival of the animal in us. Humanity only begins for man with self-surrender.
Let us be true: this is the highest maxim of art and of life, the secret of eloquence and of virtue, and of all moral authority.
Doing easily what others find difficult is talent; doing what is impossible for talent is genius.
If nationality is consent, the state is compulsion.
Blessed be childhood, which brings down something of heaven into the midst of our rough earthliness.
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.
Without passion man is a mere latent force and possibility, like the flint which awaits the shock of the iron before it can give forth its spark.
It is not what he had, or even what he does which expresses the worth of a man, but what he is.
We only understand that which already is within us.
To shun one's cross is to make it heavier.