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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.

-Henri Frederic Amiel

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How True It Is

Henri Frederic Amiel

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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.

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I Find Myself Regarding Existence As Though From Beyond The Tomb, From Another World; All Is Strange To Me; I Am, As It Were, Outside My Own Body And Individuality; I Am Depersonalized, Detached, Cut Adrift. Is This Madness?

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.

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.

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

To Win True Peace, A Man Needs To Feel Himself Directed, Pardoned, And Sustained By A Supreme Power, To Feel Himself In The Right Road, At The Point Where God Would Have Him Be - In Order With God And The Universe. This Faith Gives Strength And Calm.

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

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

At Bottom There Is But One Subject Of Study: The Forms And Metamorphoses Of Mind. All Other Subjects May Be Reduced To That; All Other Studies Bring Us Back To This Study.

Nothing Resembles Pride So Much As Discouragement.

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.

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.

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.

The Germs Of All Things Are In Every Heart, And The Greatest Criminals As Well As The Greatest Heroes Are But Different Modes Of Ourselves.

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

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

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

We Are Never More Discontented With Others Than When We Are Discontented With Ourselves.

In Order To See Christianity, One Must Forget All The Christians.

[i]t Is Truth Alone-scientific, Established, Proved, And Rational Truth-which Is Capable Of Satisfying Nowadays The Awakened Minds Of All Classes. We May Still Say Perhaps, 'faith Governs The World,'-but The Faith Of The Present Is No Longer In Revelation Or In The Priest-it Is In Reason And In Science.

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

The Immense Majority Of Our Species Are Candidates For Humanity, And Nothing More.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Women Wish To Be Loved Without A Why Or A Wherefore; Not Because They Are Pretty, Or Good, Or Well-bred, Or Graceful, Or Intelligent, But Because They Are Themselves.

Independent Women

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

To Know How To Suggest Is The Art Of Teaching.

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.

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

Philosophy Starts With Doubt And Loves Only Truth.

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

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

Philosophy Means The Complete Liberty Of The Mind, And Therefore Independence Of All Social, Political Or Religious Prejudice... It Loves One Thing Only... Truth.

Philosophy Means The Complete Liberty Of The Mind, And Therefore Independence Of All Social, Political Or Religious Prejudice... It Loves One Thing Only... Truth.

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.

To Do Easily What Is Difficult For Others Is The Mark Of Talent.

Everything Which Is, Is Thought, But Not Conscious And Individual Thought. The Human Intelligence Is But The Consciousness Of Being. It Is What I Have Formulated Before: Everything Is A Symbol Of A Symbol, And A Symbol Of What? Of Mind.

Almost Everything Comes From Almost Nothing.

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

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

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

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.

Society Lives By Faith, And Develops By Science.

Let Us Be True: This Is The Highest Maxim Of Art And Of Life, The Secret Of Eloquence And Of Virtue, And Of All Moral Authority.

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

If Man Was What He Ought To Be, He Would Be Adored By The Animals.

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

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.

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

Positive Thinking

Learn To... Be What You Are, And Learn To Resign With A Good Grace All That You Are Not.

Let Mystery Have Its Place In You ; Do Not Be Always Turning Up Your Whole Soil With The Ploughshare Of Self-examination, But Leave A Little Fallow Corner In Your Heart Ready For Any Seed The Winds May Bring.

Time Is But The Measure Of The Difficulty Of A Conception. Pure Thought Has Scarcely Any Need Of Time, Since It Perceives The Two Ends Of An Idea Almost At The Same Moment.

Cleverness Is Serviceable For Everything, Sufficient For Nothing.

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.

The Philosopher Aspires To Explain Away All Mysteries, To Dissolve Them Into Light. Mystery On The Other Hand Is Demanded And Pursued By The Religious Instinct; Mystery Constitutes The Essence Of Worship, The Power Of Proselytism.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

A Journal Takes The Place Of A Confidant, That Is, Of Friend Or Wife; It Becomes A Substitute For Production, A Substitute For Country And Public. It Is A Grief-cheating Device, A Mode Of Escape And Withdrawal; But, Factotum As It Is, Though It Takes The Place Of Everything, Properly Speaking It Represents Nothing At All.

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

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.

The Stationary Condition Is The Beginning Of The End

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

[i]t Is Truth Alone-scientific, Established, Proved, And Rational Truth-which Is Capable Of Satisfying Nowadays The Awakened Minds Of All Classes. We May Still Say Perhaps, 'faith Governs The World,'-but The Faith Of The Present Is No Longer In Revelation Or In The Priest-it Is In Reason And In Science.

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

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.

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.

Put Personal Ambition Away From You, And Then You Will Find Consolation In Living Or In Dying, Whatever May Happen To You.

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.

Cleverness Is Serviceable For Everything, Sufficient For Nothing.

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

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

We Are All Visionaries, And What We See Is Our Soul In Things.

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

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.

Man Is A Willful And Covetous Animal, Who Makes Use Of His Intellect To Satisfy His Inclinations, But Who Cares Nothing For Truth, Who Rebels Against Personal Discipline, Who Hates Disinterested Thought And The Idea Of Self-education. Wisdom Offends Him, Because It Rouses In Him Disturbance And Confusion, And Because He Will Not See Himself As He Is.

Common Sense Is Calculation Applied To Life.

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.

Any Landscape Is A Condition Of The Spirit.

American Landscape

Civilization Is First Of All A Moral Thing. Without Truth, Respect For Duty, Love Of Neighbor, And Virtue, Everything Is Destroyed. The Morality Of A Society Is Alone The Basis Of Civilization.

Love Is Like Swallowing Hot Chocolate Before It Has Cooled Off. It Takes You By Surprise At First, But Keeps You Warm For A Long Time.

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

Love Is Faith And One Faith Leads To Another.

Sacrifice, Which Is The Passion Of Great Souls, Has Never Been The Law Of Societies.

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

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.

Time Is But The Measure Of The Difficulty Of A Conception. Pure Thought Has Scarcely Any Need Of Time, Since It Perceives The Two Ends Of An Idea Almost At The Same Moment.

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.

Everything Which Is, Is Thought, But Not Conscious And Individual Thought. The Human Intelligence Is But The Consciousness Of Being. It Is What I Have Formulated Before: Everything Is A Symbol Of A Symbol, And A Symbol Of What? Of Mind.

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

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

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

You Desire To Know The Art Of Living, My Friend? It Is Contained In One Phrase: Make Use Of Suffering.

I Do Not Deny The Rights Of Democracy, But I Have No Illusions As To The Uses That Will Be Made Of Those Rights So Long As Wisdom Is Rare And Pride Abundant

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

Happiness Has No Limits, Because God Has Neither Bottom Nor Bounds, And Because Happiness Is Nothing But The Conquest Of God Through Love.

Every Life Is A Profession Of Faith.

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

To Marry Unequally Is To Suffer Equally.

At Bottom, Everything Depends Upon The Presence Or Absence Of One Single Element In The Soul - Hope

Accept Life, And You Must Accept Regret.

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.

Will Localizes Us, Thought Universalizes Us.

Analysis Kills Spontaneity.

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

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

Righteous Ends, Thus Approved, Absolve Of Guilt The Most Violent Means.

Women Wish To Be Loved Without A Why Or A Wherefore; Not Because They Are Pretty, Or Good, Or Well-bred, Or Graceful, Or Intelligent, But Because They Are Themselves.

Independent Women

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

[t]he Habit Of Scientific Analysis ... Exhausts The Material Offered To It.

Scientific Method

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Let Mystery Have Its Place In You ; Do Not Be Always Turning Up Your Whole Soil With The Ploughshare Of Self-examination, But Leave A Little Fallow Corner In Your Heart Ready For Any Seed The Winds May Bring.

Melancholy Is At The Bottom Of Everything, Just As At The End Of All Rivers Is The Sea. Can It Be Otherwise In A World Where Nothing Lasts, Where All That We Have Loved Or Shall Love Must Die? Is Death, Then, The Secret Of Life? The Gloom Of An Eternal Mourning Enwraps, More Or Less Closely, Every Serious And Thoughtful Soul, As Night Enwraps The Universe.

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

Sacrifice, Which Is The Passion Of Great Souls, Has Never Been The Law Of Societies.

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

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

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

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

Society Lives By Faith, And Develops By Science.

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.

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.

Work While You Have The Light. You Are Responsible For The Talent That Has Been Entrusted To You.

Life Is But A Daily Oscillation Between Revolt And Submission.

Whatever Impatience We May Feel Towards Our Neighbor, And Whatever Indignation Our Race May Rouse In Us, We Are Chained One To Another, And, Companions In Labour And Misfortune, Have Everything To Lose By Mutual Recrimination And Reproach. Let Us Be Silent As To Each Other's Weakness, Helpful, Tolerant, Many, Tender Towards Each Other! Or, If We Cannot Feel Tenderness, May We At Least Feel Pity!

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

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

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

We Become Actors Without Realizing It, And Actors Without Wanting To.

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

Let Us Be True: This Is The Highest Maxim Of Art And Of Life, The Secret Of Eloquence And Of Virtue, And Of All Moral Authority.

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?

Nature Does At Least What She Can To Translate Into Visible Form The Wealth Of The Creative Formula. By The Vastness Of The Abysses Into Which She Penetrates, In The Effort--the Unsuccessful Effort--to House And Contain The Eternal Thought, We May Measure The Greatness Of The Divine Mind.

The Only Substance Properly So Called Is The Soul.

The Ideal, After All, Is True Than The Real: For The Ideal Is The Eternal Element In Perishable Things.

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.

At Bottom There Is But One Subject Of Study: The Forms And Metamorphoses Of Mind. All Other Subjects May Be Reduced To That; All Other Studies Bring Us Back To This Study.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

Time And Space Are Fragments Of The Infinite For The Use Of Finite Creatures.

Only Evil Grows Of Itself, While For Goodness We Want Effort And Courage.

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.

Our Dependence Outweighs Our Independence, For We Are Independent Only In Our Desire, While We Are Dependent On Our Health, On Nature, On Society, On Everything In Us And Outside Us.

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.

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

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

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

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

A Man Only Understands What Is Akin To Something Already Existing In Himself.

Analysis Kills Spontaneity. The Grain Once Ground Into Flour Springs And Germinates No More.

Philosophy Means The Complete Liberty Of The Mind.

Time Wasted Is A Theft From God.

Nothing Finite Is True, Is Interesting, Is Worthy To Fix My Attention. All That Is Particular Is Exclusive, And All That Is Exclusive Repels Me.

Mother Of Marvels, Mysterious And Tender Nature, Why Do We Not Live More In Thee.

A Belief Is Not True Simply Because It Is Useful.

Positive Atheism

What We Do Not Understand We Have No Right To Judge

Order Means Light And Peace, Inward Liberty And Free Command Over One's Self; Order Is Power.

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

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.

Joy Is The Vital Air Of The Soul.

To Depersonalize Man Is The Dominant Drift Of Our Times.

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.

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

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.

Before Crime Is Committed Conscience Must Be Corrupted, And Every Bad Man Who Succeeds In Reaching A High Point Of Wickedness Begins With This.

Common Sense Is Calculation Applied To Life.

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

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

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.

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Hjalmar Branting

Bashar Al-Assad

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