Henri-Frédéric Amiel
Quotations
Common sense is the measure of the possible; it is composed of experience and prevision; it is calculation applied to life.
An error is the more dangerous in proportion to the degree of truth which it contains.
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.
Mutual respect implies discretion and reserve even in love itself; it means preserving as much liberty as possible to those whose life we share. We must distrust our instinct of intervention, for the desire to make one's own will prevail is often disguised under the mask of solicitude.
Melancholy is at the bottom of everything, just as at the end of all rivers is the sea. Can it be otherwise in a world where nothing lasts, where all that we have loved or shall love must die? Is death, then, the secret of life? The gloom of an eternal mourning enwraps, more or less closely, every serious and thoughtful soul, as night enwraps the universe.
Mozart has the classic purity of light and the blue ocean; Beethoven the romantic grandeur which belongs to the storms of air and sea, and while the soul of Mozart seems to dwell on the ethereal peaks of Olympus, that of Beethoven climbs shuddering the storm-beaten sides of a Sinai. Blessed be they both! Each represents a moment of the ideal life, each does us good. Our love is due to both.
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.
Self-interest is but the survival of the animal in us. Humanity only begins for man with self-surrender.
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.
What we call little things are merely the causes of great things; they are the beginning, the embryo, and it is the point of departure which, generally speaking, decides the whole future of an existence. One single black speck may be the beginning of a gangrene, of a storm, of a revolution.
Thought is a kind of opium; it can intoxicate us, while still broad awake; it can make transparent the mountains and everything that exists.
Uncertainty is the refuge of hope.
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Humorists, Wits, and Satirists of the Past
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Famous Teachers of the Past
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Massachusetts Writers of the Past
Memories Are Like Clouds
A Saigon Party:
And Other Vietnam War Short Stories
And Other Vietnam War Short Stories
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