306 Quotes by Henri Frédéric Amiel

Uncertainty is the refuge of hope.

It is not what he had, or even what he does, which expresses the worth of a man, but what he is.

I find myself regarding existence as though from beyond the tomb, from another world; all is strange to me; I am, as it were, outside my own body and individuality; I am depersonalized, detached, cut adrift. Is this madness?

[I]t is truth alone-scientific, established, proved, and rational truth-which is capable of satisfying nowadays the awakened minds of all classes. We may still say perhaps, 'faith governs the world,'-but the faith of the present is no longer in revelation or in the priest-it is in reason and in science.

Wisdom consists in rising superior both to madness and to common sense, and in lending oneself to the universal delusion without becoming its dupe.

To know where one is going and what one wishes - this is order ... to organize one's life to distribute one's time ... all this belong to and is included in the word order.

Let mystery have its place in you ; do not be always turning up your whole soil with the ploughshare of self-examination, but leave a little fallow corner in your heart ready for any seed the winds may bring ...

Time and space are fragments of the infinite for the use of the finite creatures.

Nothing resembles pride so much as discouragement.