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.
每個花蕾只開一次花，每朵花也只有其最美麗的一分鐘；因此，在心靈的花園中，每一種感覺都有其綻放的瞬間，都有其獨一無二的廣闊優雅和光芒四射的王權時刻。每顆星星在夜晚只會穿過我們頭頂的子午線一次，並且只在那裡閃耀一瞬間；因此，在心靈的天堂中，每一個想法只會達到一次頂峰，在那一刻，它的所有光輝和偉大都達到頂峰。藝術家、詩人或思想家，如果你想固定並永久保存你的想法或感受，請抓住這個精確而短暫的時刻，因為這是它們的最高點。在它之前，你對它們只有模糊的輪廓或朦朧的預感。此後，你將只剩下淡淡的回憶或無力的悔恨；那一刻，就是你實現理想的那一刻。
怨恨是害怕表露自己的憤怒，是意識到自己無能為力而產生的無能的狂怒。
Spite is anger which is afraid to show itself, it is an impotent fury conscious of its impotence.
CONTENTS
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.
In this second edition of the English translation of Amiel’s “Journal Intime,” I have inserted a good many new passages, taken from the last French edition (Cinquiéme édition, revue et augmentée.) But I have not translated all the fresh material to be found in that edition nor have I omitted certain sections of the Journal which in these two recent volumes have been omitted by their French editors. It would be of no interest to give my reasons for these variations at length. They depend upon certain differences between the English and the French public, which are more readily felt than explained. Some of the passages which I have left untranslated seemed to me to overweight the introspective side of the Journal, already so full—to overweight it, at any rate, for English readers. Others which I have retained, though they often relate to local names and books, more or less unfamiliar to the general public, yet seemed to me valuable as supplying some of that surrounding detail, that setting, which helps one to understand a life. Besides, we English are in many ways more akin to Protestant and Puritan Geneva than the French readers to whom the original Journal primarily addresses itself, and some of the entries I have kept have probably, by the nature of things, more savor for us than for them.
M. A. W.
In two or three cases—not more, I think—I have allowed myself to transpose a sentence bodily, and in a few instances I have added some explanatory words to the text, which wherever the addition was of any importance, are indicated by square brackets.
My warmest thanks are due to my friend and critic, M. Edmond Scherer, from whose valuable and interesting study, prefixed to the French Journal, as well as from certain materials in his possession which he has very kindly allowed me to make use of, I have drawn by far the greater part of the biographical material embodied in the Introduction. M. Scherer has also given me help and advice through the whole process of translation—advice which his scholarly knowledge of English has made especially worth having.
In the translation of the more technical philosophical passages I have been greatly helped by another friend, Mr. Bernard Bosanquet, Fellow of University College, Oxford, the translator of Lotze, of whose care and pains in the matter I cherish a grateful remembrance.
But with all the help that has been so freely given me, not only by these friends but by others, I confide the little book to the public with many a misgiving! May it at least win a few more friends and readers here and there for one who lived alone, and died sadly persuaded that his life had been a barren mistake; whereas, all the while—such is the irony of things—he had been in reality working out the mission assigned him in the spiritual economy, and faithfully obeying the secret mandate which had impressed itself upon his youthful consciousness: “Let the living live; and you, gather together your thoughts, leave behind you a legacy of feeling and ideas; you will be most useful so.”
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