“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

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Henri-Frédéric Amiel 50

Swiss philosopher and poet 1821–1881

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“When we soar up above ourselves, And become, in our upward striving towards God, So simple, that the naked Love in the Heights can lay hold on us, There where Love cherishes Love, above all activity and all virtue (That is to say, in our Origin, wherefrom we are spiritually born)— Then we cease, and we and all that is our own die into God. And in this death we become hidden Sons of God, and find in ourselves a new life, And that is Eternal Life. And of these Sons, St. Paul says: ‘Ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.’ In our approach to God we must bear with us ourselves and all that we do, As a perpetual sacrifice to God; And in the Presence of God we must leave ourselves and all our works, And, dying in love, soar up above all created things into the Superessential Kingdom of God.
And of this the Spirit of God speaks in the Book of Hidden Things, saying: ‘Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord.”

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“If in our life and spiritual experience we have become accustomed to transcending our particular individuality, thus realising more clearly in our faith the universal and liberating value of this act, free from any objectivistic idolatry and if we centre down in our soul, in the reality of all things and all persons, then our meeting with death will be more serene, because already in our life we will have overcome the feeling of our limits as something terrible, insuperable and absolute. Absolute instead will be the act performed in the self, the celebration of God’s presence.”

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“This is the only path on which we can proceed with ease. It is the path to the freedom of our soul. Therefore, may we protect ourselves and give love to others. May we protect others as we would protect ourselves, love our neighbors as ourselves, and make all mankind our relatives, our brothers and sisters. May we make everyone our loved ones and help them become those who trust in God. May we all go together on this path as the followers of God, as the representatives of God, as the children of the one Father.”

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Henri-Frédéric Amiel 50

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