"Look twice, if what you want is a just [36] conception; look once, if what you want is a sense of beauty."
"It is not history which teaches conscience to be honest; it is the conscience which educates history. Fact is corrupting—it is we who correct it by the persistence of our ideal."
"To do easily what is difficult for others is the mark of talent. To do what is impossible for talent is the mark of genius."
"Duty has the virtue of making us feel the reality of a positive world, while at the same time detaching us from it."
"As it is impossible to be outside God, the best is consciously to dwell in Him."
"He also (the Son of Man), He above all, is the great Misunderstood, the least comprehended."
"The pensée writer is to the philosopher what the dilettante is to the artist."
There are some, we know, who hold that genius cannot, in the nature of things, be "sterile"; that there are no "mute" Miltons, or the like. Well! genius, or only a very distinguished talent, the gift which Amiel nursed so jealously did come into evidence. And the [37] reader, we hope, sees also already how well his English translator has done her work. She may justly feel, as part at least of the reward of a labour which must have occupied much time, so many of the freshest hours of mind and spirit, that she has done something to help her author in the achievement of his, however discouraged still irrepressible, desire, by giving additional currency to a book which the best sort of readers will recognize as an excellent and certainly very versatile companion, not to be forgotten.
17th March 1886