Henri Frederic Amiel Mean Quotations

Conquering any difficulty always gives one a secret joy, for it means pushing back a boundary-line and adding to one's liberty.

Order means light and peace, inward liberty and free command over one's self; order is power.

Philosophy means the complete liberty of the mind.

There is an illusion of central position, justifying one's own purposes as right and everybody else¹s as wrong, and providing a proper degree of paranoia. Righteous ends, thus approved, absolve of guilt the most violent means.

Righteous ends, thus approved, absolve of guilt the most violent means.

Criticism is above all a gift, an intuition, a matter of tact and flair; it cannot be taught or demonstrated--it is an art. Critical genius means an aptitude for discerning truth under appearances or in disguises which conceal it; for discovering it in spite of the errors of testimony, the frauds of tradition, the dust of time, the loss or alteration of texts. It is the sagacity of the hunter whom nothing deceives for long, and whom no ruse can throw off the trail.

War is a brutal and fierce means of pacification; it means the suppression of resistance by the destruction or enslavement of the conquered.

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.

The masses are the material of democracy, but its form-that is to say, the laws which express the general reason, justice, and utility-can only be rightly shaped by wisdom, which is by no means a universal property.

Philosophy means the complete liberty of the mind, and therefore independence of all social, political or religious prejudice... It loves one thing only... truth.