Henri Frédéric Amiel’s diary, 1856

Yesterday seems to me as far off as though it were last year. My memory holds nothing more of the past than its general plan, just as my eye perceives nothing more…

How true it is that our destinies are decided by nothings and that a small imprudence helped by some insignificant accident, as an acorn is fertilized by a drop of…

I have been reading Rosenkrantz’s “History of Poetry” all day: it touches upon all the great names of Spain, Portugal, and France, as far as Louis XV. It is a good…

A man and still more a woman, always betrays something of his or her nationality. The women of Russia, for instance, like the lakes and rivers of their native…

The German admires form, but he has no genius for it. He is the opposite of the Greek; he has critical instinct, aspiration, and desire, but no serene command of…

Mit sack und pack here I am back again in my town rooms. I have said good-bye to my friends and my country joys, to verdure, flowers, and happiness. Why did I leave…

A delightful Sunday afternoon at Pressy. Returned late, under a great sky magnificently starred, with summer lightning playing from a point behind the Jura. Drunk…

We must learn to look upon life as an apprenticeship to a progressive renunciation, a perpetual diminution in our pretensions, our hopes, our powers, and our…

In all the chief matters of life we are alone, and our true history is scarcely ever deciphered by others. The chief part of the drama is a monologue, rather an…

This evening was the second quartet concert. It stirred me much more than the first; the music chosen was loftier and stronger. It was the quartet in D minor of…