Sophie Swetchine quotes:

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  • There are two ways of attaining an important end, force and perseverance; the silent power of the latter grows irresistible with time.

  • To love deeply in one direction makes us more loving in all others.

  • Strength alone knows conflict, weakness is born vanquished.

  • A friendship will be young after the lapse of half a century; a passion is old at the end of three months.

  • Travel is the frivolous part of serious lives, and the serious part of frivolous ones.

  • The best advice on the art of being happy is about as easy to follow as advice to be well when one is sick.

  • The mind wears the colors of the soul, as a valet those of his master.

  • We are all of us, in this world, more or less like St. January, whom the inhabitants of Naples worship one day, and pelt with baked apples the next.

  • Repentance is accepted remorse.

  • We deceive ourselves when we fancy that only weakness needs support. Strength needs it far more.

  • Virtue is the daughter of Religion; Repentance, her adopted child,--a poor orphan who, without the asylum which she offers, would not know where to hide her sole treasure, her tears!

  • Silence is like nightfall. Objects are lost in it insensibly.

  • We expect everything and are prepared for nothing.

  • The chains which cramp us most are those which weigh on us least.

  • The world has no sympathy with any but positive griefs. It will pity you for what you lose; never for what you lack

  • Faith, amid the disorders of a sinful life, is like the lamp burning in an ancient tomb.

  • In order to have an enemy, one must be somebody. One must be a force before he can be resisted by another force. A malicious enemy is better than a clumsy friend.

  • In this world of change, nothing which comes stays, and nothing which goes is lost.

  • Repentance is accepted remorse."

  • It would seem that by our sorrows only are we called to a knowledge of the Infinite. Are we happy? The limits of life constrain us on all sides.

  • Our vanity is the constant enemy of our dignity.

  • In youth, grief comes with a rush and overflow, but it dries up, too, like the torrent. In the winter of life it remains a miserable pool, resisting all evaporation.

  • There is a transcendent power in example.

  • To have ideas is to gather flowers; to think is to weave them into garlands.

  • There are words which are worth as much as the best actions, for they contain the germ of them all.

  • Truth only is prolific. Error, sterile in itself, produces only by means of the portion of truth which it contains. It may have offspring, but the life which it gives, like that of the hybrid races, cannot be transmitted.

  • Old age is not one of the beauties of creation, but it is one of its harmonies. The law of contrasts is one of the laws of beauty. Under the conditions of our climate, shadow gives light its worth; sternness enhances mildness; solemnity, splendor. Varying proportions of size support and subserve one another.

  • A good, finished scandal, fully armed and equipped, such as circulates in the world, is rarely the production of a single individual, or even of a single coterie. It sees the light in one; is rocked and nurtured in another; is petted, developed, and attains its growth in a third; and receives its finishing touches only after passing through a multitude of hands. It is a child that can count a host of fathers--all ready to disown it.

  • A malicious enemy is better than a clumsy friend.

  • All the joys of earth will not assuage our thirst for happiness; while a single grief suffices to shroud life in a sombre veil, and smite it with nothingness at all points.

  • America has begun her career at the culminating point of life, as Adam did at the age of thirty.

  • Antiquity is a species of aristocracy with which it is not easy to be on visiting terms.

  • As we advance in life the circle of our pains enlarges, while that of our pleasures contracts.

  • Attention is a silent and perpetual flattery.

  • By becoming unhappy, we sometimes learn how to be less so.

  • Death is the justification of all the ways of the Christian, the last end of all his sacrifices, the touch of the Great Master which completes the picture.

  • Feeling loves a subdued light.

  • Friendship is like those ancient altars where the unhappy, and even the guilty, found a sure asylum.

  • God has prohibited despair.

  • God Himself allows certain faults; and often we say, "I have deserved to err; I have deserved to be ignorant.

  • Happiness and Virtue clasp hands and walk together.

  • He who has ceased to enjoy his friend's superiority has ceased to love him.

  • He who has never denied himself for the sake of giving has but glanced at the joys of charity.

  • I can understand the things that afflict mankind, but I often marvel at God those which console. An atom may wound, but God alone can heal.

  • I like people to be saints; but I want them to be first and superlatively honest men.

  • I love victory, but I love not triumph.

  • I study much, and the more I study, the oftener I go back to those first principles which are so simple that childhood itself can lisp them.

  • If grief is to be mitigated, it must either wear itself out or be shared.

  • If it were ever allowable to forget what is due to superiority of rank, it would be when the privileged themselves remember it.

  • If we look closely at this earth, where God seems so utterly forgotten, we shall find that it is He, after all, who commands the most fidelity and the most love.

  • Impassioned characters never attain their mark till they have overshot it.

  • In retirement, the passage of time seems accelerated. Nothing warns us of its flight. It is a wave which never murmurs, because there is no obstacle to its flow.

  • In this world of change naught which comes stays and naught which goes is lost.

  • In youth we feel richer for every new illusion; in maturer years, for every one we lose.

  • Indifferent souls never part. Impassioned souls part, and return to one another, because they can do no better.

  • Indulgence is lovely in the sinless; toleration, adorable in the pious and believing heart.

  • It is a little stream, which flows softly, but freshens everything along its course.

  • Kindness causes us to learn, and to forget, many things.

  • Let our lives be pure as snowfields, where our steps leave a mark but no stain.

  • Let us not fail to scatter along our pathway the seeds of kindness and sympathy. Some of them will doubtless perish; but if one only lives, it will perfume our steps and rejoice our eyes.

  • Let us resist the opinion of the world fearlessly, provided only that our self-respect grows in proportion to our indifference.

  • Let us shun everything, which might tend to efface the primitive lineaments of our individuality. Let us reflect that each one of us is a thought of God.

  • Liberty must be a mighty thing; for by it God punishes and rewards nations.

  • Life grows darker as we go on, till only one pure light is left shining on it; and that is faith. Old age, like solitude and sorrow, has its revelations.

  • Love enters the heart unawares: takes precedence of all the emotions--or, at least, will be second to none--and even reflection becomes its accomplice. While it lives, it renders blind; and when it has struck its roots deep only itself can shake them. It reminds one of hospitality as practiced among the ancients. The stranger was received upon the threshold of the half-open door, and introduced into the sanctuary reserved for the Penates. Not until every attention had been lavished upon him did the host ask his name; and the question was sometimes deferred till the very moment of departure.

  • Love sometimes elevates, creates new qualities, suspends the working of evil inclinations; but only for a day. Love, then, is an Oriental despot, whose glance lifts a slave from the dust, and then consigns him to it again.

  • Loving souls are like paupers. They live on what is given them.

  • Men are always invoking justice; yet it is justice which should make them tremble.

  • Men do not go out to meet misfortune as we do. They learn it; and we--we divine it.

  • Might we not say to the confused voices which sometimes arise from the depths of our being: "Ladies, be so kind as to speak only four at a time?"

  • Miracles are God's coups d'etat.

  • My sole defense against the natural horror which death inspires is to love beyond it.

  • Old age is not one of the beauties of creation, but it is one of its harmonies.

  • Old age is the night of life, as night is the old age of the day. Still, night is full of magnificence; and, for many, it is more brilliant than the day.

  • One must be a somebody before they can have an enemy. One must be a force before he can be resisted by another force.

  • Only those faults which we encounter in ourselves are insufferable to us in others.

  • Our faults afflict us more than our good deeds console. Pain is ever uppermost in the conscience as in the heart.

  • People read every thing nowadays, except books.

  • Piety softens all that courage bears.

  • Poor humanity!--so dependent, so insignificant, and yet so great.

  • Prayer has a right to the word "ineffable." It is an hour of outpourings which words cannot express,--of that interior speech which we do not articulate, even when we employ it.

  • Pride dries the tears of anger and vexation; humility, those of grief. The one is indignant that we should suffer; the other calms us by the reminder that we deserve nothing else.

  • Providence has hidden a charm in difficult undertakings, which is appreciated only by those who dare to grapple with them.

  • Real sorrow is almost as difficult to discover as real poverty. An instinctive delicacy hides the rays of the one and the wounds of the other.

  • Resignation is, to some extent, spoiled for me by the fact that it is so entirely conformable to the laws of common-sense. I should like just a little more of the supernatural in the practice of my favorite virtue.

  • Respect is a serious thing in him who feels it, and the height of honor for him who inspires the feeling.

  • Since there must be chimeras, why is not perfection the chimera of all men?

  • Suspicion has its dupes, as well as credulity.

  • The beings who appear cold, but are only timid, adore where they dare to love.

  • The best of lessons, for a good many people, would be to listen at a keyhole. It is a pity for such that the practice is dishonorable.

  • The Christian's God is a God of metamorphoses. You cast grief into his bosom: you draw thence, peace. You cast in despair: 'tis hope that rises to the surface. It is a sinner whose heart he moves. It is a saint who returns him thanks.

  • The heart has always the pardoning power.

  • The ideal friendship is to feel as one while remaining two.

  • The injustice of men subserves the justice of God, and often His mercy.

  • The inventory of my faith for this lower world is soon made out. I believe in Him who made it.

  • The law of common sense.

  • The most culpable of the excesses of Liberty is the harm she does herself.

  • The most dangerous of all flattery is the inferiority of those about us.

  • The only true method of action in this world is to be in it, but not of it.

  • The root of sanctity is sanity. A man must be healthy before he can be holy. We bathe first, and then perfume.

  • The symptoms of compassion and benevolence, in some people, are like those minute guns which warn you that you are in deadly peril.

  • The very might of the human intellect reveals its limits.

  • There are but two future verbs which man may appropriate confidently and without pride: "I shall suffer," and "I shall die.

  • There are minds constructed like the eyes of certain insects, which discern, with admirable distinctness, the most delicate lineaments and finest veins of the leaf which bears them, but are totally unable to take in the ensemble of the plant or shrub. When error has effected an entrance into such minds, it remains there impregnable, because no general view assists them in throwing off the chance impression of the moment.

  • There are not good things enough in life to indemnify us for the neglect of a single duty.

  • There are questions so indiscreet, that they deserve neither truth nor falsehood in reply.

  • There is nothing at all in life, except what we put there.

  • There is nothing steadfast in life but our memories. We are sure of keeping intact only that which we have lost.

  • There is, by God's grace, an immeasurable distance between late and too late.

  • Those who have suffered much are like those who know many languages; they have learned to understand and be understood by all.

  • Those who make us happy are always thankful to us for being so; their gratitude is the reward of their benefits.

  • Time is the shower of Danae; each drop is golden.

  • To reveal imprudently the spot where we are most sensitive and vulnerable is to invite a blow. The demigod Achilles admitted no one to his confidence.

  • True poets, like great artists, have scarcely any childhood, and no old age.

  • We are always looking into the future, but we see only the past.

  • We are amused through the intellect, but it is the heart that saves us from ennui.

  • We are often prophets to others only because we are our own historians.

  • We are rich only through what we give.

  • We do not judge men by what they are in themselves, but by what they are relatively to us.

  • We must labor unceasingly to render our piety reasonable, and our reason pious.

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