February 3, 1857.—The phantasmagoria
of the soul cradles and soothes me as though I were an Indian yoghi,
and everything, even my own life, becomes to me smoke, shadow, vapor,
and illusion. I hold so lightly to all
phenomena that they end by
passing over me like gleams over a landscape, and are gone without
leaving any
impression. Thought is a kind of opium; it can
intoxicate us, while still broad awake; it can make transparent
the
mountains and everything that exists. It is by love only that one
keeps hold upon reality, that one recovers
one's proper self, that
one becomes again will, force, and individuality. Love could do
everything with me; by
myself and for myself I prefer to be
nothing....
I have the imagination of regret and
not that of hope. My clear−sightedness is retrospective, and the
result
with me of disinterestedness and prudence is that I attach
myself to what I have no chance of obtaining....
Amiel's Journal
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