Henri-Frédéric Amiel: Trending quotes (page 2)

“Christianity, if it is to triumph over pantheism, must absorb it.”

Henri-Frédéric Amiel

1 October 1849
Journal Intime (1882), Journal entries
Context: 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.

“Every life has its potentiality of greatness”

Henri-Frédéric Amiel

16 July 1848
Journal Intime (1882), Journal entries
Context: To adore, to understand, to receive, to feel, to give, to act: there is my law my duty, my happiness, my heaven. Let come what come will — even death. Only be at peace with self, live in the presence of God, in communion with Him, and leave the guidance of existence to those universal powers against whom thou canst do nothing! If death gives me time, so much the better. If its summons is near, so much the better still; if a half-death overtake me, still so much the better, for so the path of success is closed to me only that I may find opening before me the path of heroism, of moral greatness and resignation. Every life has its potentiality of greatness, and as it is impossible to be outside God, the best is consciously to dwell in Him.

Life

“Uncertainty is the refuge of hope.”

Henri-Frédéric Amiel

Amiel's journal; the Journal intime of Henri-Frédéric Amiel 1890 (p.368)
Journal Intime (1882), Journal entries
Source: https://archive.org/details/amielsjournaljou00amieiala

Hope

“There is nothing non-exclusive but the All; my end is communion with Being through the whole of Being.”

Henri-Frédéric Amiel

Journal Intime (1882), Quotes used in the Introduction by Ward
Context: There is no repose for the mind except in the absolute; for feeling except in the infinite; for the soul except in the divine. 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. There is nothing non-exclusive but the All; my end is communion with Being through the whole of Being.

“Everything is a symbol of a symbol, and a symbol of what? Of mind.”

Henri-Frédéric Amiel

30 December 1850
Journal Intime (1882), Journal entries
Context: 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.

“Spite is anger which is afraid to show itself, it is an impotent fury conscious of its impotence.”

Henri-Frédéric Amiel

30 December 1850
Journal Intime (1882), Journal entries

Anger

“I believe in goodness, and I hope that good will prevail.”

Henri-Frédéric Amiel

31 August 1869
Journal Intime (1882), Journal entries
Context: My mind has been a tumult of opposing systems, — Stoicism, Quietism, Buddhism, Christianity. Shall I never be at peace with myself? If impersonality is a good, why am I not consistent in the pursuit of it? and if it is a temptation, why return to it, after having judged and conquered it?
Is happiness anything more than a conventional fiction? The deepest reason for my state of doubt is that the supreme end and aim of life seems to me a mere lure and deception. The individual is an eternal dupe, who never obtains what he seeks, and who is forever deceived by hope. My instinct is in harmony with the pessimism of Buddha and of Schopenhauer. It is a doubt which never leaves me, even in my moments of religious fervor. Nature is indeed for me a Mala; and I look at her, as it were, with the eyes of an artist. My intelligence remains skeptical. What, then, do I believe in? I do not know. And what is it I hope for? It would be difficult to say. Folly! I believe in goodness, and I hope that good will prevail. Deep within this ironical and disappointed being of mine there is a child hidden — a frank, sad, simple creature, who believes in the ideal, in love, in holiness, and all heavenly superstitions. A whole millennium of idyls sleeps in my heart; I am a pseudo-skeptic, a pseudo-scoffer.

Hope

“There is no repose for the mind except in the absolute; for feeling except in the infinite; for the soul except in the divine.”

Henri-Frédéric Amiel

Journal Intime (1882), Quotes used in the Introduction by Ward
Context: There is no repose for the mind except in the absolute; for feeling except in the infinite; for the soul except in the divine. 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. There is nothing non-exclusive but the All; my end is communion with Being through the whole of Being.

Feeling , Soul

“Whenever conscience speaks with a divided, uncertain, and disputed voice, it is not yet the voice of God.”

Henri-Frédéric Amiel

6 April 1851
Journal Intime (1882), Journal entries
Context: Whenever conscience speaks with a divided, uncertain, and disputed voice, it is not yet the voice of God. Descend still deeper into yourself, until you hear nothing but a clear and undivided voice, a voice which does away with doubt and brings with it persuasion, light and serenity.

God

“Whether we will or no, there is an esoteric doctrine, there is a relative revelation; each man enters into God so much as God enters into him, or as Angelus, I think, said, "the eye by which I see God is the same eye by which He sees me."”

Henri-Frédéric Amiel

1 October 1849; Amiel is here actually quoting Meister Eckhart, not Angelus Silesius as he supposed.
Journal Intime (1882), Journal entries
Context: Redemption, eternal life, divinity, humanity, propitiation, incarnation, judgment, Satan, heaven and hell — all these beliefs have been so materialized and coarsened, that with a strange irony they present to us the spectacle of things having a profound meaning and yet carnally interpreted. Christian boldness and Christian liberty must be reconquered; it is the church which is heretical, the church whose sight is troubled and her heart timid. Whether we will or no, there is an esoteric doctrine, there is a relative revelation; each man enters into God so much as God enters into him, or as Angelus, I think, said, "the eye by which I see God is the same eye by which He sees me."

God , Thinking

“Life is the apprenticeship to progressive renunciation, to the steady diminution of our claims, of our hopes, of our powers, of our liberty.”

Henri-Frédéric Amiel

Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919), Journal

Life , Hope

“There is but one thing needful — to possess God. All our senses, all our powers of mind and soul, all our external resources, are so many ways of approaching the divinity, so many modes of tasting and of adoring God. We must learn to detach ourselves from all that is capable of being lost, to bind ourselves absolutely only to what is absolute and eternal, and to enjoy the rest as a loan, as a usufruct…. To worship, to comprehend, to receive, to feel, to give, to act: this our law, our duty, our happiness, our heaven.”

Henri-Frédéric Amiel

16 July 1848
Only one thing is necessary: to possess God — All the senses, all the forces of the soul and of the spirit, all the exterior resources are so many open outlets to the Divinity; so many ways of tasting and of adoring God. We should be able to detach ourselves from all that is perishable and cling absolutely to the eternal and the absolute and enjoy the all else as a loan, as a usufruct…. To worship, to comprehend, to receive, to feel, to give, to act: this our law, our duty, our happiness, our heaven.
As translated in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
Journal Intime (1882), Journal entries

God , Law , Way , Feeling

“If ignorance and passion are the foes of popular morality, it must be confessed that moral indifference is the malady of the cultivated classes. The modern separation of enlightenment and virtue, of thought and conscience, of the intellectual aristocracy from the honest and common crowd is the greatest danger that can threaten liberty.”

Henri-Frédéric Amiel

Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919), Journal

Passion , Indifference

“[There still remains the question whether] he who discovers a new world in the depths of the invisible would not do wisely to plant on it a flag known to himself alone, and, like Achilles, "devour his heart in secret;" whether the greatest problems which have ever been guessed on earth had not better have remained buried in the brain which had found the key to them, and whether the deepest thinkers — those whose hand has been boldest in drawing aside the veil, and their eye keenest in fathoming the mysteries beyond it — had not better, like the prophetess of Ilion, have kept for heaven, and heaven only, secrets and mysteries which human tongue cannot truly express, nor human intelligence conceive.”

Henri-Frédéric Amiel

Review of L'Art Chrétien by Alexis-François Rio in the Bibliothèque Universelle de Genève. (1842)
Journal Intime (1882), Quotes used in the Introduction by Ward

Secret , World , Intelligence , Question

“Put personal ambition away from you, and then you will find consolation in living or in dying, whatever may happen to you.”

Henri-Frédéric Amiel

3 May 1849
Journal Intime (1882), Journal entries

Personality

“To repel one's cross is to make it heavier.”

Henri-Frédéric Amiel

Variant translation: To shun one's cross is to make it heavier.
Journal Intime (1882), Journal entries