“What is it which has always come between real life and me? What glass screen has, as it were, interposed itself between me and the enjoyment, the possession, the contact of things, leaving me only the role of the looker-on?” — Henri-Frédéric Amiel Copy Share Image
“Dare to be what you are, and learn to resign with a good grace all that you are not and to believe in your… — Henri-Frédéric Amiel Copy Share Image
“Hindoo wisdom long ago regarded the world as the dream of Brahma. Must we hold with Fichte that it is the individual dream of… — Henri-Frédéric Amiel Copy Share Image
“Life is short and we never have enough time for the hearts of those who travel the way with us. O, be swift to… — Henri-Frederic Amiel Copy Share Image
These pages reproduce me very imperfectly, and there are many things in me of which I find no trace in them.I suppose it is because, in the first place, sadness takes up the pen more readily than joy; and, in the next, because I depend so much upon surrounding circumstances. When there is no call upon me, and nothing to… — Henri-Frédéric Amiel Copy Share
“Life is short. We don't have much time to gladden the hearts of those who walk this way with us. So, be swift to… — Henri-Frédéric Amiel Copy Share Image
“In these moments of tête-à-tête with the infinite, how different life looks! How all that usually occupies and excites us becomes suddenly puerile, frivolous,… — Henri-Frédéric Amiel Copy Share Image
“Feebleness of will brings about weakness of head, and the abyss, in spite of its horror, comes to fascinate us, as though it were… — Henri-Frédéric Amiel Copy Share Image
“It is not what he has, nor even what he does, which directly expresses the worth of a man, but what he is.” — Henri-Frédéric Amiel Copy Share Image
“At the bottom of the modern man there is always a great thirst for self-forgetfulness, self-distraction; he has a secret horror of all which… — Henri-Frédéric Amiel Copy Share Image
“Reality, the present, the irreparable, the necessary, repel and even terrify me. I have too much imagination, conscience, and penetration and not enough character.… — Henri-Frédéric Amiel Copy Share Image
