Author
Swiss · 1821-1881 · 10 quotes
Swiss · 1821–1881
10 quotes in our collection
Henri-Frédéric Amiel (1821-1881) was a Swiss philosopher, poet, critic, and professor best known for the Journal intime, his vast private diary. Born in Geneva, he taught aesthetics and moral philosophy while living a relatively quiet academic life. His published poetry and criticism were overshadowed after his death by selections from the journal, which revealed a mind of unusual introspection, spiritual restlessness, and psychological delicacy. Amiel matters because he made inward life itself a serious literary and philosophical subject. His journal records doubts, ideals, failures of will, religious feeling, loneliness, and the pressure of self-analysis with exceptional honesty. He influenced later readers interested in consciousness, melancholy, and the moral drama of reflection. Amiel's quotes often sound intimate rather than public, carrying the weight of a person examining the soul before it becomes action.
Common Themes
Collected Quotes
The thinker serves it by his intellect, and as a light upon its path.
Happiness does away with ugliness, and even makes the beauty of beauty.
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 mere article of the world’s furniture.
The gentleman, then, is the man who is master of himself, who respects himself, and makes others respect him.
He is one of a crowd, a taxpayer, an elector, an anonymity, but not a man.