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[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.

-Henri Frederic Amiel

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[i]t Is Truth Alone-scientific,

Henri Frederic Amiel

...

[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.

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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?

Clever People Will Recognize And Tolerate Nothing But Cleverness.

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

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.

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.

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

Life Is But A Daily Oscillation Between Revolt And Submission.

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

There Is No Repose For The Mind Except In The Absolute; For Feeling, Except In The Infinite; For The Soul, Except In The Divine.

The Beautiful Souls Of The World Have An Art Of Saintly Alchemy, By Which Bitterness Is Converted Into Kindness, The Gall Of Human Experience Into Gentleness, Ingratitude Into Benefits, Insults Into Pardon.

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

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

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

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.

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

Hope Is Only The Love Of Life.

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

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

Hope Is Only The Love Of Life.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

What Governs Men Is The Fear Of Truth.

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.

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.

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.

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

We Only Understand That Which Already Is Within Us.

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

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

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.

Will Localizes Us, Thought Universalizes Us.

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

Philosophy Starts With Doubt And Loves Only Truth.

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

Common Sense Is Calculation Applied To Life.

To Know How To Suggest Is The Art Of Teaching.

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.

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.

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.

The Stationary Condition Is The Beginning Of The End

We Are Always Making God Our Accomplice So That We May Legalize Our Own Inequities.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

Every Landscape Is, As It Were, A State Of The Soul, And Whoever Penetrates Into Both Is Astonished To Find How Much Likeness There Is In Each Detail.

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

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

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 Great Artist And Thinker Are The Simplifiers.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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?

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

Scientific Method

Nothing Resembles Pride So Much As Discouragement.

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

Any Landscape Is A Condition Of The Spirit.

American Landscape

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

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.

Kindness Is Gladdening The Hearts Of Those Who Are Traveling The Dark Journey With Us.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

The Laws Of Animality Govern Almost The Whole Of History.

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

The Mind Must Have For Ballast The Clear Conception Of Duty, If It Is Not To Fluctuate Between Levity And Despair.

The Beautiful Souls Of The World Have An Art Of Saintly Alchemy, By Which Bitterness Is Converted Into Kindness, The Gall Of Human Experience Into Gentleness, Ingratitude Into Benefits, Insults Into Pardon.

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.

When Everything Is In Its Right Place Within Us, We Ourselves Are In Balance With The Whole Work Of God.

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

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.

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.

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

To Depersonalize Man Is The Dominant Drift Of Our Times.

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

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

To Marry Unequally Is To Suffer Equally.

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.

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

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

Accept Life, And You Must Accept Regret.

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

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?

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

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.

Cleverness Is Serviceable For Everything, Sufficient For Nothing.

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.

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

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

To Depersonalize Man Is The Dominant Drift Of Our Times.

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

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

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.

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

Order Is Man's Greatest Need, And His True Well-being.

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

Every Man Is A Priest, Even Involuntarily; His Conduct Is An Unspoken Sermon, Which Is Forever Preaching To Others.

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

The Unfinished Is Nothing.

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

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

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

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

A Belief Is Not True Simply Because It Is Useful.

Positive Atheism

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.

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

Truth Above All, Even When It Upsets Us And Overwhelms Us.

Sympathy Is The First Condition Of Criticism.

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

Emancipation From Error Is The Condition Of Real Knowledge.

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

Every Landscape Is, As It Were, A State Of The Soul, And Whoever Penetrates Into Both Is Astonished To Find How Much Likeness There Is In Each Detail.

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

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?

Every Situation Is An Equilibrium Of Forces; Every Life Is A Struggle Between Opposing Forces Working Within The Limits Of A Certain Equilibrium

The Great Artist And Thinker Are The Simplifiers.

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 Work Which Gives Flavor To Life.

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

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

Our Systems, Perhaps, Are Nothing More Than An Unconscious Apology For Our Faults, A Gigantic Scaffolding Whose Object Is To Hide From Us Our Favorite Sin.

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

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.

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

The Fire Which Enlightens Is The Same Fire Which Consumes.

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

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

Every Living Being Seeks Instinctively To Complete Itself.

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.

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.

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.

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.

In Every Loving Woman There Is A Priestess Of The Past

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.

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.

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

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

Any Landscape Is A Condition Of The Spirit.

American Landscape

Every Situation Is An Equilibrium Of Forces; Every Life Is A Struggle Between Opposing Forces Working Within The Limits Of A Certain Equilibrium

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

Our Systems, Perhaps, Are Nothing More Than An Unconscious Apology For Our Faults, A Gigantic Scaffolding Whose Object Is To Hide From Us Our Favorite Sin.

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.

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.

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

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

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

Faith Is Certitude Without Proofs ... Faith Is A Sentiment, For It Is A Hope; It Is An Instinct, For It Precedes All Outward Instruction.

Almost Everything Comes From Almost Nothing.

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.

Almost Everything Comes From Almost Nothing.

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.

About Jesus We Must Believe No One But Himself.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

Sadness Takes Up The Pen More Readily Than Joy.

Knowledge, Love, Power-there Is The Complete 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.

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.

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

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

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

Time Wasted Is A Theft From God.

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

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.

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.

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.

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