306 Quotes by Henri Frédéric Amiel

The art which is grand and yet simple is that which presupposes the greatest elevation both in artist and in public.

Tears are the symbol of the inability of the soul to restrain its emotion and retain its self command.

How, then, find the courage for action? By slipping a little into unconsciousness, spontaneity, instinct which holds one to the earth and dictates the relatively good and useful. By accepting the human condition more simply, and candidly, by dreading troubles less, calculating less, hoping more.

The unfinished is nothing.

Analysis kills spontaneity. The grain once ground into flour springs and germinates no more.

Doubt is the accomplice of tyranny.

We only understand that which already is within us.

At the bottom of the modern man there is always a great thirst for self-forgetfulness, self-distraction . . . and therefore he turns away from all those problems and abysses which might recall to him his own nothingness.

Before giving advice we must have secured its acceptance, or, rather, have made it desired.