Henri-Frédéric Amiel Quotes

“A belief is not true because it is useful.”

“All appears to change when we change.”

“Destiny has two ways of crushing us - by refusing our wishes and by fulfilling them.”

“He who floats with the current, who does not guide himself according to higher principles, who has no ideal, no convictions – such a man is a mere article of the worlds furniture – a thing moved, instead of a living and moving being – an echo, not a voice.”

“I'm not interested in age. People who tell me their age are silly. You're as old as you feel.”

“Learn to be what you are, and learn to resign with a good grace all that you are not.”

“Materialism coarsens and petrifies everything, making everything vulgar, and every truth false.”

“The man who has no inner-life is a slave to his surroundings.”

“The man who insists on seeing with perfect clearness before he decides, never decides. ”

“Uncertainty is the refuge of hope.”

“What we do not understand we have no right to judge.”

“Women wish to be loved not because they are pretty, or good, or well bred, or graceful, or intelligent, but because they are themselves.”

“You desire to know the art of living, my friend? It is contained in one phrase: make use of suffering.”

“Try your hardest to combat atrophy and routine. To question the obvious and the given is an essential element of the maxim 'de omnius dubitandum' (All is to be doubted).”