306 Quotes by Henri Frédéric Amiel

Any landscape is a condition of the spirit.

If nationality is consent, the state is compulsion.

من لا يملك حياه بداخله ،، هو عـــبـــد لما يحيط به

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

A journal takes the place of a confidant, that is, of friend or wife; it becomes a substitute for production, a substitute for country and public. It is a grief-cheating device, a mode of escape and withdrawal; but, factotum as it is, though it takes the place of everything, properly speaking it represents nothing at all...

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.

Time is but the space between our memories; as soon as we cease to perceive this space, time has disappeared.

There is no respect for others without humility in one's self.

I can find no words for what I feel. My consciousness is withdrawn into itself; I hear my heart beating, and my life passing. It seems to me that I have become a statue on the banks of the river of time, that I am the spectator of some mystery, and shall issue from it old, or no longer capable of age.