Henri Quotes

Life is short and we have never too much time for gladdening the hearts of those who are traveling the dark journey with us. Oh, be swift to love, make haste to be kind.

First, silence makes us pilgrims. Secondly, silence guards the fire within. Thirdly, silence teaches us to speak.

The crises of modern man are to a large extent religious ones, insofar as they are an awakening of his awareness to an absence of meaning.

The question is precisely to know whether the past has ceased to exist, or ceased to be useful...

When you're suffering, you're oversensitive to everything.

We read books. They make us think. It matters very little whether we agree with the books or not.

We are not what we do, we are not what we have, we are not what others think of us. Coming home is claiming the truth. I am the beloved child of a loving creator.

The mere ambition to write a poem is enough to kill it.

The measure of your solitude is the measure of your capacity for communion.

Solitude is the furnace in which transformation takes place.

[Duration is] the form which the succession of our conscious states assumes when our ego lets itself live, when it refrains from separating its present state from its former state.

Sometimes we do grip the concert in a human head, and so hold it that in a way we get a record of it into paint, but the vision and expressing of one day will not do for the next.

I do not distinguish between the construction of a book and that of a painting and I always proceed from the simple to the complex." - 1946

If you look at every flower individually, they look quite miserable. Put them together in a vase and they become a bouquet and that's quite attractive. I think about our community often in that way

A good death is a death in solidarity with others. To prepare ourselves for a good death, we must develop or deepen this sense of solidarity.

— How do you make your pictures? — I don’t know, it’s not important.

It wasn't that the Gospel proved useful for my many worries but that the Gospel proved the uselessness of my worries and so refocused my whole attention.

...patriotism has become a narrow offensive sentiment which as long as it lives will maintain war and exhaust the world

Physicists believe that the Gaussian law has been proved in mathematics while mathematicians think that it was experimentally established in physics.

Cherish your own emotions and never under-value them. We are not here to do what has already been done.

To know how to grow old is the master work of wisdom and one of the most difficult chapters in the great art of living.

To know how to grow old is the master-work of wisdom and one of the most difficult chapters in the great art of living.

So long as the majority of Canadians have two countries one here and one in Europe national unity will remain a myth and a constant source of internecine quarrels.

To exist is to change to change is to mature to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly.

Cleverness is serviceable for everything sufficient for nothing.

Every life is a possession of faith and exercises an inevitable and silent propaganda.

We must have the courage to be happy.

A man must be able to cut a knot for everything cannot be untied.

The man who insists upon seeing with perfect clearness before he decides never decides.

Without passion man is a mere latent force and possibility like the flint which awaits the shock of the iron before it can give forth its spark.

Faith is a certitude without proofs ... a sentiment for it is a hope it is an instinct for it precedes all outward instruction.

Faith is the little night-light that burns in a sick-room as long as it is there the obscurity is not complete we turn towards it and await the daylight.

Blessed be childhood which brings down something of heaven into the midst of our rough earthliness.

Seek those who find your road agreeable your personality and mind stimulating your philosophy acceptable and your experiences helpful. Let those who do not seek their own kind.

Doing easily what others find is difficult is talent doing what is impossible for talent is genius.

For purposes of action nothing is more useful than narrowness of thought combined with energy of will.

How then find the courage for action?... By accepting the human condition more simply and candidly by dreading troubles less calculating less hoping more.

The pursuit of happiness ... is the greatest feat man has to accomplish.

To live we must conquer incessantly we must have the courage to be happy.

Unconsciousness spontaneity instinct ... hold us to the earth and dictate the relatively good and useful.

Analysis kills spontaneity. The grain once ground into flour germinates no more.

Man becomes man only by his intelligence but he is man only by his heart.

Man is a passion which brings a will into play which works an intelligence.

Cherish your emotions and never undervalue them.

The man who has no inner life is the slave of his surroundings.

To learn new habits is everything for it is to reach the substance of life. Life is but a tissue of habits.

There is nothing more difficult for a truly creative painter than to paint a rose because before he can do so he has first to forget all the roses that were ever painted.

Man becomes man only by the intelligence but he is man only by the heart.

The present contains nothing more than the past and what is found in the effect was already in the cause.

Life on the farm is a school of patience you can't hurry the crops or make an ox in two days.