A belief is not true because it is useful

— Henri-Frédéric Amiel

A journal takes the place of a confidant, that is, of friend or wife; it becomes a substitute for production, a substitute for country and public. It is a grief-cheating device, a mode of escape and withdrawal; but, factotum as it is, though it takes the place of everything, properly speaking it represents nothing at all...

— Henri-Frédéric Amiel

All appears to change when we change

— Henri-Frédéric Amiel

Any landscape is a condition of the spirit.

— Henri-Frédéric Amiel

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

— Henri-Frédéric Amiel

I begin to realize that my memory is a great catacomb, and that below my actual standing-ground there is layer after layer of historical ashes. Is the life of mind something like that of great trees of immemorial growth? Is the living layer of consciousness super-imposed upon hundreds of dead layers? Dead? No doubt this is too much to say, but still, when memory is slack the past becomes almost as though it had never been. To remember that we did know once is not a sign of possession but a sign of loss; it is like the number of an engraving which is no longer on its nail, the title of a volume no longer to be found on its shelf. My mind is the empty frame of a thousand vanished images.

— Henri-Frédéric Amiel

I'm not interested in age. People who tell me their age are silly. You're as old as you feel.

— Henri-Frédéric Amiel

Indoo wisdom long ago regarded the world as the dream of Brahma. Must we hold with Fichte that it is the individual dream of each individual ego? Every fool would then be a cosmogenic poet producing the firework of the universe under the dome of the infinite.

— Henri-Frédéric Amiel

It is not what he has, nor even what he does, which directly expresses the worth of a man, but what he is.

— Henri-Frédéric Amiel

Let us be never afraid of innocent joy; God is good and what he does is well done; resign yourself to everything, even happiness; ask for the spirit of sacrifice, of detachment, of renunciation, and above all, for the spirit of joy and gratitude.

— Henri-Frédéric Amiel