"Each bud flowers but once and each flower has but its minute of perfect beauty; so, in the garden of the soul each feeling has, as it were, its flowering instant, its one and only moment of expansive grace and radiant kingship. Each star passes but once in the night through the meridian over our heads and shines there but an instant; so, in the heaven of the mind each thought touches its zenith but once, and in that moment all its brilliancy and all its greatness culminate. Artist, poet, or thinker, if you want to fix and immortalize your ideas or your feelings, seize them at this precise and fleeting moment, for it is their highest point. Before it, you have but vague outlines or dim presentiments of them. After it you will have only weakened reminiscence or powerless regret; that moment is the moment of your ideal."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
30 December 1850
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Henri-Fr%C3%A9d%C3%A9ric_Amiel
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
44 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Henri-Frédéric Amiel →
Related Quotes
"Only one thing is necessary: to possess God — All the senses, all the forces of the soul and of the spirit, all the e…"
"There is a great affinity in me with the Hindu genius - that mind, vast, imaginative, loving, dreamy and speculative,…"
"Ought I not to have been more careful to win the good opinion of others, more determined to conquer their hostility o…"
"[There still remains the question whether] he who discovers a new world in the depths of the invisible would not do w…"
"There is no repose for the mind except in the absolute; for feeling except in the infinite; for the soul except in th…"
"I can find no words for what I feel. My consciousness is withdrawn into itself; I hear my heart beating, and my life …"
"I am a spectator, so to speak, of the molecular whirlwind which men call individual life; I am conscious of an incess…"
"Uncertainty is the refuge of hope. — Amiel's journal; the Journal intime of Henri-Frédéric Amiel 1890 (p.368)"
"There is but one thing needful — to possess God. All our senses, all our powers of mind and soul, all our external re…"
"To adore, to understand, to receive, to feel, to give, to act: there is my law my duty, my happiness, my heaven. Let …"