Background Image

...

Composition Is A Process Of Combination, In Which Thought Puts Together Complementary Truths, And Talent Fuses Into Harmony The Most Contrary Qualities Of Style. So That There Is No Composition Without Effort, Without Pain Even, As In All Bringing Forth. The Reward Is The Giving Birth To Something Living--something, That Is To Say, Which, By A Kind Of Magic, Makes A Living Unity Out Of Such Opposed Attributes As Orderliness And Spontaneity, Thought And Imagination, Solidity And Charm.

-Henri Frederic Amiel

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

Composition Is A Process

Henri Frederic Amiel

...

Composition Is A Process Of Combination, In Which Thought Puts Together Complementary Truths, And Talent Fuses Into Harmony The Most Contrary Qualities Of Style. So That There Is No Composition Without Effort, Without Pain Even, As In All Bringing Forth. The Reward Is The Giving Birth To Something Living--something, That Is To Say, Which, By A Kind Of Magic, Makes A Living Unity Out Of Such Opposed Attributes As Orderliness And Spontaneity, Thought And Imagination, Solidity And Charm.

Views: 73587

Topic

More From Henri Frederic Amiel

Mozart Has The Classic Purity Of Light And The Blue Ocean; Beethoven The Romantic Grandeur Which Belongs To The Storms Of Air And Sea, And While The Soul Of Mozart Seems To Dwell On The Ethereal Peaks Of Olympus, That Of Beethoven Climbs Shuddering The Storm-beaten Sides Of A Sinai. Blessed Be They Both! Each Represents A Moment Of The Ideal Life, Each Does Us Good. Our Love Is Due To Both.

The Obscure Only Exists That It May Cease To Exist. In It Lies The Opportunity Of All Victory And All Progress. Whether It Call Itself Fatality, Death, Night, Or Matter, It Is The Pedestal Of Life, Of Light, Of Liberty And The Spirit. For It Represents Resistance -- That Is To Say, The Fulcrum Of All Activity, The Occasion For Its Development And Its Triumph.

To Be Always Ready A Man Must Be Able To Cut A Knot, For Everything Cannot Be Untied.

Destiny Has Two Ways Of Crushing Us - By Refusing Our Wishes And By Fulfilling Them.

What We Call Little Things Are Merely The Causes Of Great Things; They Are The Beginning, The Embryo, And It Is The Point Of Departure Which, Generally Speaking, Decides The Whole Future Of An Existence. One Single Black Speck May Be The Beginning Of Gangrene, Of A Storm, Of A Revolution.

How True It Is That Our Destinies Are Decided By Nothings And That A Small Imprudence Helped By Some Insignificant Accident, As An Acorn Is Fertilized By A Drop Of Rain, May Raise The Trees On Which Perhaps We And Others Shall Be Crucified.

If Nationality Is Consent, The State Is Compulsion.

The Laws Of Animality Govern Almost The Whole Of History.

He Who Is Too Much Afraid Of Being Duped Has Lost The Power Of Being Magnanimous.

Order Is A Great Person's Need And Their True Well Being.

Any Landscape Is A Condition Of The Spirit.

American Landscape

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.

The Man Who Insists Upon Seeing With Perfect Clearness Before He Decides, Never Decides. Accept Life, And You Must Accept Regret.

It Would Have Been A Joy To Me To Be Smiled Upon, Loved, Encouraged, Welcomed, And To Obtain What I Was So Ready To Give, Kindness And Goodwill. But To Hunt Down Consideration And Reputation - To Force The Esteem Of Others - Seemed To Me An Effort Unworthy Of Myself, Almost A Degradation.

There Is No Curing A Sick Man Who Believes Himself To Be In Health.

Latent Genius Is But A Presumption. Everything That Can Be, Is Bound To Come Into Being, And What Never Comes Into Being Is Nothing.

One May Guess The Why And Wherefore Of A Tear And Yet Find It Too Subtle To Give Any Account Of. A Tear May Be The Poetical Resume Of So Many Simultaneous Impressions, The Quintessence Of So Many Opposing Thoughts! It Is Like A Drop Of One Of Those Precious Elixirs Of The East Which Contain The Life Of Twenty Plants Fused Into A Single Aroma.

Music Is Harmony, Harmony Is Perfection, Perfection Is Our Dream, And Our Dream Is Heaven.

Sympathy Is The First Condition Of Criticism; Reason And Justice Presuppose, At Their Origin, Emotion.

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.

It Is Not What He Had, Or Even What He Does Which Expresses The Worth Of A Man, But What He Is.

For Purposes Of Action Nothing Is More Useful Than Narrowness Of Thought Combined With Energy Of Will.

Charm Is The Quality In Others That Makes Us More Satisfied With Ourselves.

The Ideal Doctor Would Be A Man Endowed With Profound Knowledge Of Life And Of The Soul, Intuitively Divining Any Suffering Or Disorder Of Whatever Kind, And Restoring Peace By His Mere Presence.

Medical Knowledge

To Live We Must Conquer Incessantly, We Must Have The Courage To Be Happy.

There Is Only One Way Of Not Hating Those Who Do Us Wrong, And That Is By Doing Them Good.

War Is A Brutal And Fierce Means Of Pacification; It Means The Suppression Of Resistance By The Destruction Or Enslavement Of The Conquered.

To Learn New Habits Is Everything, For It Is To Reach The Substance Of Life. Life Is But A Tissue Of Habits.

Criticism Is Above All A Gift, An Intuition, A Matter Of Tact And Flair; It Cannot Be Taught Or Demonstrated--it Is An Art. Critical Genius Means An Aptitude For Discerning Truth Under Appearances Or In Disguises Which Conceal It; For Discovering It In Spite Of The Errors Of Testimony, The Frauds Of Tradition, The Dust Of Time, The Loss Or Alteration Of Texts. It Is The Sagacity Of The Hunter Whom Nothing Deceives For Long, And Whom No Ruse Can Throw Off The Trail.

To Depersonalize Man Is The Dominant Drift Of Our Times.

The Spirit Of Sarcasm Lives And Thrives In The Midst Of Universal Wreck; Its Balls Are Enchanted And Itself Invulnerable, And It Braves Retaliations And Reprisals Because Itself Is A Mere Flash, A Bodiless And Magical Nothing.

Men Prefer The False Due To Habit, Passion, Will. Preference For Truth Is Rare. Men Are Ruled By Their Fear Of Truth.

An Error Is The More Dangerous In Proportion To The Degree Of Truth Which It Contains.

Heroism Is The Brilliant Triumph Of The Soul Over The Flesh - Over Fear...heroism Is The Dazzling And Glorious Concentration Of Courage.

The More A Man Loves, The More He Suffers. The Sum Of Possible Grief For Each Soul Is In Proportion To Its Degree Of Perfection.

Nothing Is More Characteristic Of A Man Than The Manner In Which He Behaves Toward Fools.

There Is Only One Way Of Not Hating Those Who Do Us Wrong, And That Is By Doing Them Good.

Action Is Coarsened Thought; Thought Becomes Concrete, Obscure, And Unconscious.

Every Living Being Seeks Instinctively To Complete Itself.

Common Sense Is The Measure Of The Possible.

In Health There Is Freedom. Health Is The First Of All Liberties.

Whenever Conscience Speaks With A Divided, Uncertain, And Disputed Voice, It Is Not The Voice Of God. Descend Still Deeper Into Yourself, Until You Hear Nothing But A Clear, Undivided Voice, A Voice Which Does Away With Doubt And Brings With It Persuasion, Light, And Serenity.

If Nationality Is Consent, The State Is Compulsion.

The Efficacy Of Religion Lies Precisely In What Is Not Rational, Philosophic, Nor Eternal; Its Efficacy Lies In The Unforeseen, The Miraculous, The Extraordinary. Thus Religion Attracts More Devotion According As It Demands More Faith - That Is To Say, As It Becomes More Incredible To The Profane Mind.

Conquering Any Difficulty Always Gives One A Secret Joy, For It Means Pushing Back A Boundary-line And Adding To One's Liberty.

The Man Who Has No Inner-life Is A Slave To His Surroundings.

Positive Thinking

True Love Is That Which Ennobles The Personality, Fortifies The Heart, And Sanctifies The Existence.

Materialism Coarsens And Petrifies Everything, Making Everything Vulgar, And Every Truth False.

Action And Faith Enslave Thought, Both Of Them In Order Not Be Troubled Or Inconvenienced By Reflection, Criticism, And Doubt.

Sacrifice Still Exists Everywhere, And Everywhere The Elect Of Each Generation Suffers For The Salvation Of The Rest.

Men Of Genius Supply The Substance Of History, While The Mass Of Men Are But The Critical Filter, The Limiting, Slackening, Passive Force Needed For The Modification Of Ideas Supplied By Genius.

I Am A Spectator, So To Speak, Of The Molecular Whirlwind Which Men Call Individual Life; I Am Conscious Of An Incessant Metamorphosis, An Irresistible Movement Of Existence, Which Is Going On Within Me - And This Phenomenology Of Myself Serves As A Window Opened Upon The Mystery Of The World.

Criticism Is Above All A Gift, An Intuition, A Matter Of Tact And Flair; It Cannot Be Taught Or Demonstrated--it Is An Art.

It Would Have Been A Joy To Me To Be Smiled Upon, Loved, Encouraged, Welcomed, And To Obtain What I Was So Ready To Give, Kindness And Goodwill. But To Hunt Down Consideration And Reputation - To Force The Esteem Of Others - Seemed To Me An Effort Unworthy Of Myself, Almost A Degradation.

In Every Loving Woman There Is A Priestess Of The Past

Common Sense Is The Measure Of The Possible; It Is Composed Of Experience And Prevision; It Is Calculation Applied To Life.

Tell Me What You Feel In Your Room When The Full Moon Is Shining In Upon You And Your Lamp Is Dying Out, And I Will Tell You How Old You Are, And I Shall Know If You Are Happy.

True Poetry Is Truer Than Science, Because It Is Synthetic, And Seizes At Once What The Combination Of All The Sciences Is Able, At Most, To Attain As A Final Result.

A Man Must Be Able To Cut A Knot, For Everything Cannot Be Untied; He Must Know How To Disengage What Is Essential From The Detail In Which It Is Enwrapped, For Everything Cannot Be Equally Considered; In A Word, He Must Be Able To Simplify His Duties, His Business And His Life.

We Are Never More Discontented With Others Than When We Are Discontented With Ourselves. The Consciousness Of Wrong-doing Makes Us Irritable, And Our Heart, In Its Cunning, Quarrels With What Is Outside It, In Order That It May Deafen The Clamor Within.

Thankfulness Is The Beginning Of Gratitude. Gratitude Is The Completion Of Thankfulness. Thankfulness May Consist Merely Of Words. Gratitude Is Shown In Acts.

The Best Path Through Life Is The Highway.

He Who Asks Of Life Nothing But The Improvement Of His Own Nature... Is Less Liable Than Anyone Else To Miss And Waste Life.

Self Improvement

There Is No Respect For Others Without Humility In One's Self.

When Everything Has Its Proper Place In Our Minds, We Are Able To Stand In Equilibrium With The Rest Of The World.

Peace Is Not In Itself A Dream, But We Know It Only As The Result Of A Momentary Equilibrium--an Accident.

The History Of Man Is Essentially Zoological; It Becomes Human Late In The Day, And Then Only In The Beautiful Souls, The Souls Alive To Justice, Goodness, Enthusiasm, And Devotion. The Angel Shows Itself Rarely And With Difficulty Through The Highly-organized Brute.

In Every Loving Woman There Is A Priestess Of The Past - A Pious Guardian Of Some Affection, Of Which The Object Has Disappeared.

A Man Must Be Able To Cut A Knot, For Everything Cannot Be Untied; He Must Know How To Disengage What Is Essential From The Detail In Which It Is Enwrapped, For Everything Cannot Be Equally Considered; In A Word, He Must Be Able To Simplify His Duties, His Business And His Life.

It Is Work Which Gives Flavor To Life.

Man Becomes Man Only By His Intelligence, But He Is Man Only By His Heart.

Life Is Short And We Have Never Too Much Time For Gladdening The Hearts Of Those Who Are Travelling The Dark Journey With Us. Oh Be Swift To Love, Make Haste To Be Kind.

Tears Are The Symbol Of The Inability Of The Soul To Restrain Its Emotion And Retain Its Self Command.

An Error Is The More Dangerous In Proportion To The Degree Of Truth Which It Contains.

As It Is Impossible To Be Outside God, The Best Is Consciously To Dwell In Him.

Man Is A Passion Which Brings A Will Into Play, Which Works An Intelligence.

Life Is But A Daily Oscillation Between Revolt And Submission.

The Musician Of The Present Day, Not Being Able To Give Us What Is Beautiful, Torments Himself To Give Us What Is New.

Life Is Short And We Have Never Too Much Time For Gladdening The Hearts Of Those Who Are Travelling The Dark Journey With Us. Oh Be Swift To Love, Make Haste To Be Kind.

To Know Where One Is Going And What One Wishes - This Is Order ... To Organize One's Life To Distribute One's Time ... All This Belong To And Is Included In The Word Order.

To Repel One's Cross Is To Make It Heavier.

The Ideal Doctor Would Be A Man Endowed With Profound Knowledge Of Life And Of The Soul, Intuitively Divining Any Suffering Or Disorder Of Whatever Kind, And Restoring Peace By His Mere Presence.

Medical Knowledge

Doing Easily What Others Find Difficult Is Talent; Doing What Is Impossible For Talent Is Genius.

He Who Asks Of Life Nothing But The Improvement Of His Own Nature... Is Less Liable Than Anyone Else To Miss And Waste Life.

Self Improvement

Learn To Limit Yourself; To Content Yourself With Some Definite Work; Dare To Be What You Are And Learn To Resign With A Good Grace All That You Are Not; And To Believe In Your Own Individuality.

Great Men Are True Men, The Men In Whom Nature Has Succeeded. They Are Not Extraordinary - They Are In The True Order. It Is The Other Species Of Men Who Are Not What They Ought To Be.

Doubt Of The Reality Of Love Ends By Making Us Doubt Everything.

The Art Which Is Grand And Yet Simple Is That Which Presupposes The Greatest Elevation Both In Artist And In Public.

The Great Majority Of Men Are But Tangled Skeins, Imperfect Keyboards, So Many Specimens Of Restless Or Stagnant Chaos--and What Makes Their Situation Almost Hopeless Is The Fact That They Take Pleasure In It. There Is No Curing A Sick Man Who Believes Himself In Health.

It Is By Teaching That We Teach Ourselves, By Relating That We Observe, By Affirming That We Examine, By Showing That We Look, By Writing That We Think, By Pumping That We Draw Water Into The Well.

Christianity, If It Is To Triumph Over Pantheism, Must Absorb It. To Our Pusillanimous Eyes Jesus Would Have Borne The Marks Of A Hateful Pantheism, For He Confirmed The Biblical Phrase "ye Are Gods," And So Would St. Paul, Who Tells Us That We Are Of "the Race Of God." Our Century Wants A New Theology - That Is To Say, A More Profound Explanation Of The Nature Of Christ And Of The Light Which It Flashes Upon Heaven And Upon Humanity.

From Every Spot On Earth We Are Equally Near Heaven And The Infinite.

To Do What Is Impossible For Talent Is The Mark Of Genius.

The Unfinished Is Nothing.

There Are 2 Sorts Of Pride: One In Which We Approve Others, The Other In Which We Cannot Accept Ourselves.

Life Is An Apprenticeship To The Constant Renunciations, To The Steady Failure Of Our Claims, Our Hopes, Our Powers, Our Liberty.

War Is A Brutal And Fierce Means Of Pacification; It Means The Suppression Of Resistance By The Destruction Or Enslavement Of The Conquered.

To Know How To Suggest Is The Great Art Of Teaching. To Attain It We Must Be Able To Guess What Will Interest; We Must Learn To Read The Childish Soul As We Might A Piece Of Music. Then, By Simply Changing The Key, We Keep Up The Attraction And Vary The Song.

Accept Life, And You Must Accept Regret.

Before Giving Advice We Must Have Secured Its Acceptance, Or, Rather, Have Made It Desired.

Joy Is The Vital Air Of The Soul.

Our Greatest Illusion Is To Believe That We Are What We Think Ourselves To Be.

A Modest Garden Contains, For Those Who Know How To Look And To Wait, More Instruction Than A Library.

To Know How To Suggest Is The Art Of Teaching.

In Every Loving Woman There Is A Priestess Of The Past - A Pious Guardian Of Some Affection, Of Which The Object Has Disappeared.

Oh Be Swift To Live, Make Haste To Be Kind.

The Soul May Be Immortal Because She Is Fitted To Rise Towards That Which Is Neither Born Nor Dies, Towards That Which Exists Substantially, Necessarily, Invariably, That Is To Say Towards God.

The Man Who Has No Inner-life Is A Slave To His Surroundings.

Positive Thinking

The Test Of Every Religious, Political, Or Educational System Is The Man That It Forms.

Do Not Despise Your Situation; In It You Must Act, Suffer, And Conquer. From Every Point On Earth We Are Equally Near To Heaven And To The Infinite.

A Microscopic Phantom Of The Universe; This Is All That We Are Able To Be.

The Test Of Every Religious, Political, Or Educational System, Is The Man Which It Forms. If A System Injures The Intelligence It Is Bad. If It Injures The Character It Is Vicious. If It Injures The Conscience It Is Criminal.

We Are Always Making God Our Accomplice, That So We May Legalize Our Own Iniquities. Every Successful Massacre Is Consecrated By A Te Deum, And The Clergy Have Never Been Wanting In Benedictions For Any Victorious Enormity.

Man Never Knows What He Wants; He Aspires To Penetrate Mysteries And As Soon As He Has, Wants To Re-establish Them. Ignorance Irritates Him And Knowledge Cloys.

If Ignorance And Passion Are The Foes Of Popular Morality, It Must Be Confessed That Moral Indifference Is The Malady Of The Cultivated Classes.

Unconsciousness, Spontaneity, Instinct ... Hold Us To The Earth And Dictate The Relatively Good And Useful.

Clever People Will Recognize And Tolerate Nothing But Cleverness.

A Musical Theme Once Exhausted, Finds Its Due Refuge And Repose In Silence.

It Gives Liberty And Breadth To Thought, To Learn To Judge Our Own Epoch From The Point Of View Of Universal History, History From The Point Of View Of Geological Periods, Geology From The Point Of View Of Astronomy.

I'm Not Interested In Age. People Who Tell Me Their Age Are Silly. You're As Old As You Feel.

Thought Is A Kind Of Opium; It Can Intoxicate Us, While Still Broad Awake; It Can Make Transparent The Mountains And Everything That Exists.

To Understand Is To Possess The Thing Understood, First By Sympathy And Then By Intelligence.

Dreams Are Excursions Into The Limbo Of Things, A Semi-deliverance From The Human Prison.

To Depersonalize Man Is The Dominant Drift Of Our Times.

Men Prefer The False Due To Habit, Passion, Will. Preference For Truth Is Rare. Men Are Ruled By Their Fear Of Truth.

Self-interest Is An Inexhaustible Source Of Convenient Illusions. The Number Of Beings Who Wish To See Truly Is Extraordinarily Small.

The Masses Are The Material Of Democracy, But Its Form-that Is To Say, The Laws Which Express The General Reason, Justice, And Utility-can Only Be Rightly Shaped By Wisdom, Which Is By No Means A Universal Property.

A Thousand Things Advance; Nine Hundred And Ninety Nine Retreat; That Is Progress.

Tears Are The Symbol Of The Inability Of The Soul To Restrain Its Emotion And Retain Its Self Command.

Every Life Is A Profession Of Faith.

What Governs Men Is The Fear Of Truth.

Doubt Is The Accomplice Of Tyranny.

Sacrifice Still Exists Everywhere, And Everywhere The Elect Of Each Generation Suffers For The Salvation Of The Rest.

The Tragic Solemnity Of Existence Strikes Us With Terrible Force On That Morning When We Wake To Find The Mournful Words "too Late" Ringing In Our Ears.

Each Man Enters Into God So Much As God Enters Into Him.

Men Don't Achieve Truth Because They Lack Humility And Love Of Truth. They Won't Criticize Their Own Beliefs. Truth Would Overwhelm Them.

Great Men Are True Men, The Men In Whom Nature Has Succeeded. They Are Not Extraordinary - They Are In The True Order. It Is The Other Species Of Men Who Are Not What They Ought To Be.

Liberty, Equality - Bad Principles! The Only True Principle For Humanity Is Justice; And Justice To The Feeble Is Protection And Kindness.

The Philosopher Is Like A Man Fasting In The Midst Of Universal Intoxication. He Alone Perceives The Illusion Of Which All Creatures Are The Willing Playthings; He Is Less Duped Than His Neighbor By His Own Nature. He Judges More Sanely, He Sees Things As They Are. It Is In This That His Liberty Consists - In The Ability To See Clearly And Soberly, In The Power Of Mental Record.

Self-interest Is But The Survival Of The Animal In Us. Humanity Only Begins For Man With Self-surrender.

It Is Not What He Had, Or Even What He Does Which Expresses The Worth Of A Man, But What He Is.

He Who Is Silent Is Forgotten; He Who Does Not Advance Falls Back; He Who Stops Is Overwhelmed; Out Distanced, Crushed; He Who Ceases T Grow Becomes Smaller; He Who Leaves Off, Gives Up; The Condition Of Standing Still Is The Beginning Of The End.

Time Is The Supreme Illusion. It Is But The Inner Prism By Which We Decompose Being And Life, The Mode Under Which We Perceive Successively What Is Simultaneous In Idea.

Mozart Has The Classic Purity Of Light And The Blue Ocean; Beethoven The Romantic Grandeur Which Belongs To The Storms Of Air And Sea, And While The Soul Of Mozart Seems To Dwell On The Ethereal Peaks Of Olympus, That Of Beethoven Climbs Shuddering The Storm-beaten Sides Of A Sinai. Blessed Be They Both! Each Represents A Moment Of The Ideal Life, Each Does Us Good. Our Love Is Due To Both.

There Is An Illusion Of Central Position, Justifying One's Own Purposes As Right And Everybody Else¹s As Wrong, And Providing A Proper Degree Of Paranoia. Righteous Ends, Thus Approved, Absolve Of Guilt The Most Violent Means.

Pay Bad People With Your Goodness; Fight Their Hatred With Your Kindness. Even If You Do Not Achieve A Victory Over Other People, You Will Conquer Yourself.

The Great Artist And Thinker Are The Simplifiers.

Our Duty Is To Be Useful, Not According To Our Desires But According To Our Powers.

The Stationary Condition Is The Beginning Of The End

The Growth And Development Of The Soul Is More Important Than Power And Glory.

A Woman Is Sometimes Fugitive, Irrational, Indeterminable, Illogical And Contradictory. A Great Deal Of Forbearance Ought To Be Shown Her, And A Good Deal Of Prudence Exercised With Regard To Her, For She May Bring About Innumerable Evils Without Knowing It. Capable Of All Kinds Of Devotion, And Of All Kinds Of Treason, Monster Incomprehensible, Raised To The Second Power, She Is At Once The Delight And The Terror Of Man.

To Be Misunderstood Even By Those Whom One Loves Is The Cross And Bitterness Of Life. It Is The Secret Of That Sad And Melancholy Smile On The Lips Of Great Men Which So Few Understand; It Is The Cruelest Trial Reserved For Self-devotion; It Is What Must Have Oftenest Wrung The Heart Of The Son Of Man; And If God Could Suffer, It Would Be The Wound We Should Be Forever Inflicting Upon Him. He Also - He Above All - Is The Great Misunderstood, The Least Comprehended.

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.

Doubt Of The Reality Of Love Ends By Making Us Doubt Everything.

One May Guess The Why And Wherefore Of A Tear And Yet Find It Too Subtle To Give Any Account Of. A Tear May Be The Poetical Resume Of So Many Simultaneous Impressions, The Quintessence Of So Many Opposing Thoughts! It Is Like A Drop Of One Of Those Precious Elixirs Of The East Which Contain The Life Of Twenty Plants Fused Into A Single Aroma.

Almost Everything Comes From Almost Nothing.

Man Is Saved By Love And Duty, And By The Hope That Springs From Duty, Or Rather From The Moral Facts Of Consciousness, As A Flower Springs From The Soil.

To Marry Unequally Is To Suffer Equally.

Pure Truth Cannot Be Assimilated By The Crowd; It Must Be Communicated By Contagion.

The Stationary Condition Is The Beginning Of The End

Man Becomes Man Only By His Intelligence, But He Is Man Only By His Heart.

Let The Living Live; And You, Gather Together Your Thoughts, Leave Behind You A Legacy Of Feeling And Ideas; You Will Be Most Useful So.

Our True History Is Scarcely Ever Deciphered By Others. The Chief Part Of The Drama Is A Monologue, Or Rather An Intimate Debate Between God, Our Conscience, And Ourselves. Tears, Grieves, Depressions, Disappointments, Irritations, Good And Evil Thoughts, Decisions, Uncertainties, Deliberations --all These Belong To Our Secret, And Are Almost All Incommunicable And Intransmissible, Even When We Try To Speak Of Them, And Even When We Write Them Down.

Society Rests Upon Conscience, Not Upon Science.

To Repel One's Cross Is To Make It Heavier.

A Man Without Passion Is Only A Latent Force, Only A Possibility, Like A Stone Waiting For The Blow From The Iron To Give Forth Sparks.

Happiness Does Away With Ugliness, And Even Makes The Beauty Of Beauty.

Analysis Kills Spontaneity.

What We Call Little Things Are Merely The Causes Of Great Things.

It Is Dangerous To Abandon One's Self To The Luxury Of Grief; It Deprives One Of Courage, And Even Of The Wish For Recovery.

The Tragic Solemnity Of Existence Strikes Us With Terrible Force On That Morning When We Wake To Find The Mournful Words "too Late" Ringing In Our Ears.

To Feel Keenly The Poetry Of A Morning's Roses, One Has To Have Just Escaped From The Claws Of This Vulture Which We Call Sickness.

Sympathy Is The First Condition Of Criticism; Reason And Justice Presuppose, At Their Origin, Emotion.

I Have Never Felt Any Inward Assurance Of Genius, Or Any Presentiment Of Glory Or Of Happiness. I Have Never Seen Myself In Imagination Great Or Famous, Or Even A Husband, A Father, An Influential Citizen. This Indifference To The Future, This Absolute Self-distrust, Are, No Doubt, To Be Taken As Signs. What Dreams I Have Are All Vague And Indefinite; I Ought Not To Live, For I Am Now Scarcely Capable Of Living.

Philosophy Means The Complete Liberty Of The Mind.

The Great Majority Of Men Are But Tangled Skeins, Imperfect Keyboards, So Many Specimens Of Restless Or Stagnant Chaos--and What Makes Their Situation Almost Hopeless Is The Fact That They Take Pleasure In It. There Is No Curing A Sick Man Who Believes Himself In Health.

The Great Artist And Thinker Are The Simplifiers.

Our Life Is Nothing, It Is True, But Our Life Is Divine. A Breath Of Nature Annihilates Us, But We Surpass Nature In Penetrating Far Beyond Her Vast Phantasmagoria To The Changeless And The Eternal.

Great Men Are The Real Men, In Them Nature Has Succeeded.

Religion Is Not A Method, It Is A Life, A Higher And Supernatural Life, Mystical In Its Root And Practical In Its Fruits; A Communion With God, A Calm And Deep Enthusiasm, A Love Which Radiates, A Force Which Acts, A Happiness Which Overflows.

So Long As A Person Is Capable Of Self-renewal They Are A Living Being. -henri

We Only Understand That Which Already Is Within Us.

Woman Is The Salvation Or The Destruction Of The Family. She Carries Its Destiny In The Folds Of Her Mantle.

What We Call Little Things Are Merely The Causes Of Great Things.

Blessed Be Childhood, Which Brings Down Something Of Heaven Into The Midst Of Our Rough Earthliness.

What We Do Not Understand We Have No Right To Judge

Each Bud Flowers But Once And Each Flower Has But Its Minute Of Perfect Beauty; So, In The Garden Of The Soul Each Feeling Has, As It Were, Its Flowering Instant, Its One And Only Moment Of Expansive Grace And Radiant Kingship.

It Is Work Which Gives Flavor To Life.

I Wonder Whether I Should Gain Anything By The Attempt To Assume A Character Which Is Not Mine. My Wavering Manner, Born Of Doubt And Scruple, Has At Least The Advantage Of Rendering All The Different Shades Of My Thought, And Of Being Sincere. If It Were To Become Terse, Affirmative, Resolute, Would It Not Be A Mere Imitation?

To Live We Must Conquer Incessantly, We Must Have The Courage To Be Happy.

Wisdom Consists In Rising Superior Both To Madness And To Common Sense, And Is Lending Oneself To The Universal Illusion Without Becoming Its Dupe.

A Belief Is Not True Simply Because It Is Useful.

Positive Atheism

Dreams Are Excursions Into The Limbo Of Things, A Semi-deliverance From The Human Prison.

It Is Dangerous To Abandon One's Self To The Luxury Of Grief; It Deprives One Of Courage, And Even Of The Wish For Recovery.

Knowledge, Love, Power-there Is The Complete Life.

Action Is Coarsened Thought; Thought Becomes Concrete, Obscure, And Unconscious.

Mutual Respect Implies Discretion And Reserve Even In Love Itself; It Means Preserving As Much Liberty As Possible To Those Whose Life We Share. We Must Distrust Our Instinct Of Intervention, For The Desire To Make One's Own Will Prevail Is Often Disguised Under The Mask Of Solicitude.

There Are 2 Sorts Of Pride: One In Which We Approve Others, The Other In Which We Cannot Accept Ourselves.

Liberty, Equality - Bad Principles! The Only True Principle For Humanity Is Justice; And Justice To The Feeble Is Protection And Kindness.

Order Is A Great Person's Need And Their True Well Being.

Trending Author

Robert Falcon Scott

Christopher McDougall

Nikolai Berdyaev

Category