From Amiel’s Journal

What comfort, what strength, what economy there is in order�material order, intellectual order, moral order. To know where one is going and what one wishes�this is order; to keep one’s word and one’s engagements�again order; to have everything ready under one’s hand, to be able to dispose of all one’s forces, and to have all one’s means of whatever kind under command�still order; to discipline one’s habits, one’s effort, one’s wishes; to organize one’s life, to distribute one’s time, to take the measure of one’s duties and make one’s rights respected; to employ one’s capital and resources, one’s talent and one’s chances profitably�all this belongs to and is included in the word order.

Order means light and peace, inward liberty and free command over one’s self; order is power. Aesthetic and moral beauty consist, the first in a true perception of order, and the second in submission to it, and in the realization of it, by, in, and around one’s self.

Order is man’s greatest need and his true well-being.