He who ceases to grow greater becomes smaller.

Amiel

A Prayer

I thank Thee, my God, for the hour that I have just passed in Thy presence. Thy will was clear to me; I measured my faults, counted my griefs, and felt Thy goodness toward me. I realized my own
nothingness, Thou gavest me Thy peace. In bitterness there is sweetness; in affliction, joy; in submission, strength; in the God who punishes, the God who loves. To lose one's life that one may gain it, to offer it that one may receive it, to possess nothing that one may conquer all, to renounce self that God may give Himself
to us, how impossible a problem, and how sublime a reality! No one truly knows happiness who has not suffered, and the redeemed are happier than the elect.

Amiel 

Of Music and Harmony

This morning the music of a brass band which had stopped under my windows moved me almost to tears. It exercised an indefinable, nostalgic power over me; it set me dreaming of another world, of infinite passion and supreme happiness. Such impressions are the echoes of paradise in the soul; memories of ideal spheres, whose sad sweetness ravishes and intoxicates the heart. O Plato! O Pythagoras! ages ago you heard these harmonies—surprised these moments of inward ecstacy—knew these divine transports! If music thus carries us to heaven, it is because music is harmony, harmony is perfection, perfection is our dream, and our dream is heaven. This world of quarrels and bitterness, of selfishness, ugliness, and misery, makes us long involuntarily for the eternal peace, for the adoration which has no limits, and the love which has no end. It is not so much the infinite as the beautiful that we yearn for. It is not being, or the limits of being, which weigh upon us; it is evil, in us and without us. It is not all necessary to be great, so long as we are in harmony with the order of the universe. Moral ambition has no pride; it only desires to fill its place, and make its note duly heard in the universal concert of the God of love.

Amiel

Let mystery have its place in you

Let mystery have its place in you; do not be always turning up your whole soil with the
plowshare of self−examination, but leave a little fallow corner in your heart ready for any seed the winds may
bring, and reserve a nook of shadow for the passing bird; keep a place in your heart for the unexpected guests,
an altar for the unknown God. Then if a bird sing among your branches, do not be too eager to tame it. If you
are conscious of something new—thought or feeling, wakening in the depths of your being—do not be in a
hurry to let in light upon it, to look at it; let the springing germ have the protection of being forgotten, hedge it
round with quiet, and do not break in upon its darkness; let it take shape and grow, and not a word of your
happiness to any one! Sacred work of nature as it is, all conception should be enwrapped by the triple veil of
modesty, silence and night.


Amiel

To become divine is the aim of life

The centre of life is neither in thought
nor in feeling, nor in will, nor even in consciousness,
so far as it thinks, feels, or
wishes. For moral truth may have been
penetrated and possessed in all these ways,
and escape us still. Deeper even than consciousness
there is our being itself, our very
substance, our nature. Only those truths
which have entered into this last region,
which have become ourselves, become spontaneous
and involuntary, instinctive and
unconscious, are really our life—that is to
say, something more than our property. So
long as we are able to distinguish any space
whatever between the truth and us we remain
outside it. The thought, the feeling,
the desire, the consciousness of life, are not
yet quite life. But peace and repose can
nowhere be found except in life and in eternal
life, and the eternal life is the divine
life, is God. To become divine is then the
aim of life : then only can truth be said to

be ours beyond the possibility of loss, because
it is no longer outside us, nor even
in us, but we are it, and it is we ; we ourselves
are a truth, a will, a work of God.
Liberty has become nature ; the creature is
one with its creator — one through love.
It is what it ought to be ; its education is
finished, and its final happiness begins.
The sun of time declines and the light of
eternal blessedness arises.
Our fleshly hearts may call this mysticism.
It is the mysticism of Jesus :
' I am
one with my Father ; ye shall be one with
me. We will be one with you.'

Amiel

The religion of a child

Self-government with  tenderness, —here you

have the condition of all authority over children.

The child must discover in us no passion, no weakness
of which he can make use ; he must
feel himself powerless to deceive or to
trouble us ; then he will recognise in us his
natural superiors, and he will attach a special
value to our kindness, because he will
respect it. The child who can rouse in us
anger, or impatience, or excitement, feels
himself stronger than we, and a child only
respects strength. The mother should consider
herself as her child's sun, a changeless
and ever radiant world, whither the
small restless creature, quick at tears and
laughter, light, fickle, passionate, full of
storms, may come for fresh stores of light,
warmth, and electricity, of calm and of
courage. The mother represents goodness,
providence, law ; that is to say, the divinity,
under that form of it which is accessible
to childhood. If she is herself passionate
she will inculcate on her child a capricious
and despotic God, or even several discordant
gods. The religion of a child depends
on what its mother and its father are, and
not on what they say. The inner and unconscious
ideal which guides their life is

precisely what touches the child ; their
words, their remonstrances, their punishments,
their bursts of feeling even, are for
him merely thunder and comedy ; what
they worship— this it is which his instinct
divines and reflects.
The child sees what we are, behind what
we wish to be. Hence his reputation as a
physiognomist. He extends his power as
far as he can with each of us ; he is the
most subtle of diplomatists. Unconsciously
he passes under the influence of each person
about him, and reflects it while transforming
it after his own nature. He is a
magnifying mirror. This is why the first
principle of education is : train yourself;
and the first rule to follow if you wish to
possess yourself of a child's will is : master
your own.

Amiel

Soul is a butterfly

we are too busy, too
encumbered, too much occupied, too active !
We read too much ! The one thing needful
is to throw off all one's load of cares, of
preoccupations, of pedantry, and to become
again young, simple, child-like, living happily
and gratefully in the present hour.
We must know how to put occupation aside,
which does not mean that we must be idle.
In an inaction which is meditative and
attentive, the wrinkles of the soul are
smoothed away, and the soul itself spreads.
unfolds, and springs afresh, and, like the
trodden grass of the roadside or the bruised
leaf of a plant, repairs its injuries, becomes
new, spontaneous, true, and original. Reverie,
like the rain of night, restores colour
and force to thoughts which have been
blanched and wearied by the heat of the
day. With gentle fertilising power it
awakens within us a thousand sleeping
germs, and, as though in play, gathers
round us materials for the future, and
images for the use of talent. Revcric is the
Sunday of thought ; and who knows which
is the more important and fruitful for man,
the laborious tension of the week, or the
life-giving repose of the Sabbath ?
...It is like a bath which gives vigour and
suppleness to the whole being, to the mind
as to the body ; it is the sign and festival
of liberty, a joyous and wholesome banquet,
the banquet of the butterfly wandering
from flower to flower over the hills and
in the fields. And remember, the soul too
is a butterfly.

Amiel

Duty

Never to tire, never to grow cold ; to
be patient, sympathetic, tender ; to look
for the budding flower and the opening
heart ; to hope always, like God ; to love
always, —this is duty.

Henri Amiel

There is but one thing needful—to possess God

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, a usufruct.
... 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 noth-
Iing ! — 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

Henry Amiel

cling only to the imperishable

Yes, be man ; that is to
say, be nature, be spirit, be the image of
God, be what is greatest, most beautiful,
most lofty in all the spheres of being, be
infinite will and idea, a reproduction of the
great whole. And be everything while
being nothing, effacing thyself, letting God
enter into thee as the air enters an empty
space, reducing the ego to the mere vessel
which contains the divine essence.
Be humble, devout, silent, that so thou mayest
hear in the depths of thyself the subtle and
profound voice ; be spiritual and pure, that
so thou mayest have communion with the
pure spirit. Withdraw thyself often into
the sanctuary of thy inmost consciousness ;
become once more point and atom, that so
thou mayest free thyself from space, time,
matter, temptation, dispersion, — that thou
mayest escape thy very organs themselves
and thine own life. That is to say, die
often, and examine thyself in the presence
of this death, as a preparation for the last
death. He who can without shuddering
confront blindness, deafness, paralysis,
disease, betrayal, poverty ; he who can
without terror appear before the sovereign
justice, he alone can call himself prepared
for partial or total death. How far am I
from anything of the sort, how far is my
heart from any such stoicism ! But at
least we can try to detach ourselves from
all that can be taken away from us, to accept
everything as a loan and a gift, and to
cling only to the imperishable, — this at any
rate we can attempt.

Henri Amiel

simplify your life

To know how to be
ready, — a great thing— a precious gift, —
and one that implies calculation, grasp and
decision. To be always ready, a man must
be able to cut a knot, for everything cannot
be untied ; he must know how to disengage
what is essential from the detail in which it
is enwrapped, for everything cannot be
equally considered ; in a word, he must be
able to simplify his duties, his business, and
his life. To know how to be ready, is to
know how to start.
It is astonishing how all of us are generally
cumbered up with the thousand and
one hindrances and duties which are not
such, but which nevertheless wind us about
with their spider threads and fetter the
movement of our wings. It is the lack of
order which makes us slaves ; the confusion
of to-day discounts the freedom of tomorrow.
Confusion is the enemy of all comfort,
and confusion is born of procrastination.
To know how to be ready we must be able
to finish. Nothing is done but what is finished.
The things which we leave dragging
behind us will start up again later on
before us and harass our path. Let each
day take thought for what concerns it,
liquidate its own affairs and respect the day
which is to follow, and then we shall be
always ready. To know how to be ready,
is at bottom to know how to die.

Henri Amiel

What is it which saves?

What is it which saves?
 How can man be led to be truly
man ? Is the ultimate root of his being
responsibility, —yes or no ? And is doing
or knowing the right, acting or thinking,
his ultimate end ?
If science does not produce
love it is insufficient. Now, all that
science gives is the amor intellectualis of
Spinoza, light without warmth, a resignation
which is contemplative and grandiose,
but inhuman, because it is scarcely transmissible
and remains a privilege, one of the
rarest of all. Moral love places the centre
of the individual in the centre of being. It
has at least salvation in principle, the germ
of eternal life. To love is virtually to know ;
to know is not virtually to love ; there you
have the relation of these two modes of
man. The redemption wrought by science
or by intellectual love is then inferior to
the redemption wrought by will or by moral
love. The first may free a man from himself,
it may enfranchise him from egotism.
The second drives the ego out of itself,
makes it active and fruitful. The one is
critical, purifying, negative ; the other is
vivifying, fertilising, positive. Science,
however spiritual and substantial it may be
in itself, is still formal relatively to love.
Moral force is then the vital point.
And this force is only produced by moral
force. Like alone acts upon like. Therefore
do not amend by reasoning, but by example
; approach feeling by feeling ; do not
hope to excite love except by love. Be what
you wish others to become. Let your self
and not your words preach for you.

Henri Amiel