Henri Frederic Amiel

“The best path through life is the highway.”

“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.”

“Common sense is the measure of the possible; it is composed of experience and prevision; it is calculation applied to life.”

“Thought is a kind of opium; it can intoxicate us, while still broad awake; it can make transparent the mountains and everything that exists.”

“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.”

“In every loving woman there is a priestess of the past - a pious guardian of some affection, of which the object has disappeared.”

“To live we must conquer incessantly, we must have the courage to be happy.”

“Order is a great person's need and their true well being.”

“Work while you have the light. You are responsible for the talent that has been entrusted to you.”

“Any landscape is a condition of the spirit.”

“Thankfulness is the beginning of gratitude. Gratitude is the completion of thankfulness. Thankfulness may consist merely of words. Gratitude is shown in acts.”

“Order is power.”

“Action and faith enslave thought, both of them in order not be troubled or inconvenienced by reflection, criticism, and doubt.”

“Man becomes man only by his intelligence, but he is man only by his heart.”

“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.”

“Sacrifice still exists everywhere, and everywhere the elect of each generation suffers for the salvation of the rest.”

“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.”

“True humility is contentment.”

“Truth is not only violated by falsehood; it may be equally outraged by silence.”

“We only understand that which already is within us.”