Henri Frederic Amiel
Life is short. Be swift to love! Make haste to be kind!
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.
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.
Learn to... be what you are, and learn to resign with a good grace all that you are not.
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.
It is not what he had, or even what he does which expresses the worth of a man, but what he is.
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.
In every loving woman there is a priestess of the past - a pious guardian of some affection, of which the object has disappeared.
If nationality is consent, the state is compulsion.
I'm not interested in age. People who tell me their age are silly. You're as old as you feel.
He who asks of life nothing but the improvement of his own nature... is less liable than anyone else to miss and waste life.
Great men are true men, the men in whom nature has succeeded. They are not extraordinary - they are in the true order. It is the other species of men who are not what they ought to be.
For purposes of action nothing is more useful than narrowness of thought combined with energy of will.
Everything you need for better future and success has already been written. And guess what? All you have to do is go to the library.
Every life is a profession of faith, and exercises an inevitable and silent influence.
Doing easily what others find difficult is talent; doing what is impossible for talent is genius.
Destiny has two ways of crushing us - by refusing our wishes and by fulfilling them.
Conquering any difficulty always gives one a secret joy, for it means pushing back a boundary-line and adding to one's liberty.
Common sense is the measure of the possible; it is composed of experience and prevision; it is calculation applied to life.
Common sense is calculation applied to life.