Perpetual Triumph


Perpetual Triumph

 

by Henri-Frédéric Amiel

 

 

Henri-Frédéric Amiel

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri-Fr%C3%A9d%C3%A9ric_Amiel

 

 

He who is silent is forgotten; he who abstains is taken at his word; he who does not advance, falls back; he who stops is overwhelmed, distanced, crushed; he who ceases to grow greater becomes smaller; he who leaves off, gives up; the stationary condition is the beginning of the end – it is the terrible symptom which precedes death. To live, is to achieve a perpetual triumph: it is to assert one's self against destruction, against sickness, against the annulling and dispersion of one's physical and moral being. It is to will without ceasing, or rather to refresh one's will day by day.

 

The man who insists on seeing with perfect clearness before he decides, never decides.

 

The test of every religious, political, or educational system, is the man which it forms. If a system injures the intelligence it is bad. If it injures the character it is vicious. If it injures the conscience it is criminal.

 

Analysis kills spontaneity. The grain once ground into flour springs and germinates no more.

 

Truth is not only violated by falsehood; it may be equally outraged by silence.

 

The great artist is the simplifier.

 

A man without passion is only a latent force, only a possibility, like a stone waiting for the blow from the iron to give forth sparks.

 

Is all my scribbling collected together – my correspondence, these thousands of pages, my lectures, my articles, my verses, my various memodanda – anything but a collection of dry leaves? To whom and for what have I been of use? And will my name live for even a day after me, and will it have any meaning to anyone? An insignificant, empty life! Vie Nulle!

 

I find myself regarding existence as though from beyond the tomb, from another world; all is strange to me; I am, as it were, outside my own body and individuality; I am depersonalized, detached, cut adrift. Is this madness?

 

The man who has no refuge in himself, who lives, so to speak, in his front rooms, in the outer whirlwind of things and opinions, is not properly a personality at all. He floats with the current, who does not guide himself according to higher principles, who has no ideal, no convictions--such a man is a mere article of furniture--a thing moved, instead of a living and moving being--an echo, not a voice. The man who has no inner life is the slave of his surroundings, as the barometer is the obedient servant of the air at rest, and the weathercock the humble servant of the air in motion.

 

Doing easily what others find difficult is talent; doing what is impossible for talent is genius.

 

The highest function of the teacher consists not so much in imparting knowledge as in stimulating the pupil in its love and pursuit. To know how to suggest is the art of teaching.

 

What we call little things are merely the causes of great things; they are the beginning, the embryo, and it is the point of departure which, generally speaking, decides the whole future of an existence. One single black speck may be the beginning of gangrene, of a storm, of a revolution.

 

Women wish to be loved not because they are pretty, or good, or well bred, or graceful, or intelligent, but because they are themselves.