Henri Frédéric Amiel’s diary, 1864

To-day April has been displaying her showery caprices. We have had floods of sunshine followed by deluges of rain, alternate tears and smiles from the petulant sky,…

I have been reading “Prince Vitale” for the second time, and have been lost in admiration of it. What wealth of color, facts, ideas—what learning, what fine-edged…

Among the Alps I become a child again, with all the follies and naïveté of childhood. Shaking off the weight of years, the trappings of office, and all the tiresome…

I have been living for two hours with a noble soul—with Eugénie de Guérin, the pious heroine of fraternal love. How many thoughts, feelings, griefs, in this journal…

Read Eugénie de Guérin’s volume again right and left with a growing sense of attraction. Everything is heart, force, impulse, in these pages which have the power of…

I have just read a part of Eugénie de Guérin’s journal over again. It charmed me a little less than the first time. The nature seemed to me as beautiful, but the…

The air this morning was so perfectly clear and lucid that one might have distinguished a figure on the Vouache. This level and brilliant sun had set fire to the…

Heard of the death of—. Will and intelligence lasted till there was an effusion on the brain which stopped everything. A bubble of air in the blood, a drop of water…