Henri Frédéric Amiel’s diary, 1878

Letter from my cousin Julia. These kind old relations find it very difficult to understand a man’s life, especially a student’s life. The hermits of reverie are…

I have just come back from a solitary walk. I heard nightingales, saw white lilac and orchard trees in bloom. My heart is full of impressions showered upon it by…

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…

Every morning I wake up with the same sense of vain struggle against a mountain tide which is about to overwhelm me. I shall die by suffocation, and the suffocation…

To-day we have been talking of realism in painting, and, in connection with it, of that poetical and artistic illusion which does not aim at being confounded with…