306 Quotes by Henri Frédéric Amiel

We only understand that which already within us.

Knowledge, love, power-there is the complete life.

To do what is impossible for talent is the mark of genius.

Obstinacy is will asserting itself without being able to justify itself. It is persistence without a reasonable motive. It is the tenacity of self-love substituted for that of reason and conscience.

So long as a person is capable of self-renewal they are a living being. -Henri

Every life is a profession of faith and exercises an inevitable and silent influence.

Men don't achieve truth because they lack humility and love of truth. They won't criticize their own beliefs. Truth would overwhelm them.

Sympathy is the first condition of criticism.

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 thing moved, instead of a living and moving being-an echo, not a voice. The man who has no inner-life is a slave of his surroundings as the barometer is the obedient servant of the air.