Amiel's Journal: The Journal Intime of Henri-Frédéric Amiel |
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able action Amiel beauty become beginning believe better bring Christianity clear common conscience consciousness critical death desire divine doubt dream duty effect equality eternal everything evil existence experience expression eyes fact faith feel force French friends give happiness harmony heart hope human idea ideal imagination impression individual infinite instinct interest Journal justice kind least less liberty light living look matter means mind moral nature never once one's ourselves passed passion peace perfect perhaps philosopher possess possible present principle produces pure reality reason religion religious remains respect rest result seems sense side society soul speak spirit suffering things thought tion true truth turn understand universal whole wish writer
Popular passages
Page 265 - there is more joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, than over ninety and nine just persons that need no repentance.
Page 478 - Where are the great, whom thou would'st wish to praise thee ? Where are the pure, whom thou would'st choose to love thee? Where are the brave, to stand supreme above thee, Whose high commands would cheer, whose chidings raise thee? Seek, seeker, in thyself ; submit to find In the stones, bread, and life in the blank mind.
Page 67 - There are two states or conditions of pride. The first is one of self-approval, the second one of selfcontempt Pride is seen probably at its purest in the last.
Page 14 - Reality, the present, the irreparable, the necessary, repel and even terrify me. I have too much imagination, conscience, and penetration, and not enough character. The life of thought alone seems to me to have enough elasticity and immensity, to be free enough from the irreparable ; practical life makes me afraid.
Page 6 - Never to tire, never to grow cold ; to be patient, sympathetic, tender ; to look for the budding flower and the opening heart ; to hope always, like God ; to love always, — this is duty.
Page 21 - The statistician will register a growing progress, and the moralist a gradual decline: on the one hand, a progress of things; on the other, a decline of souls. The useful will take the place of the beautiful, industry of art, political economy of religion, and arithmetic of poetry.
Page 45 - My privilege is to be the spectator of my own life-drama, to be fully conscious of the tragi-comedy of my own destiny, and, more than that, to be in the secret of the tragi-comic itself — that is to say, to be unable to take my illusions seriously, to see myself, so to speak, from the theatre on the stage, or to be like a man looking from beyond the tomb into existence. I feel myself forced to feign a particular interest in my individual part, while all the time I am living...
Page 358 - We must treat our subject brutally and not be always trembling lest we should be doing it a wrong. We must be able to transmute and absorb it into our own substance. This sort of confident effrontery is beyond me ; my whole nature tends to that impersonality which respects and subordinates itself to the object; it is love of truth which holds me back from concluding and deciding.
Page 480 - A mesure qu'on a plus d'esprit, on trouve qu'il ya plus d'hommes originaux. Les gens du commun ne trouvent pas de différence entre les hommes.
Page 482 - The courses of nature, and the prodigious injustices of man in society, affect him with neither horror nor awe. He will see no monster if he can help it.