Sophie Swetchine Quotes

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

Strength alone knows conflict, weakness is born vanquished.

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.

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.

Years do not make sages; they only make old men.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

When we see the shameful fortunes amassed in all quarters of the globe, are we not impelled to exclaim that Judas' thirty pieces of silver have fructified across the centuries?

Where there is a question of economy, I prefer privation.

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

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.

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.

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.

I love victory, but I love not triumph.

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?"

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

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.

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

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.

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

Miracles are God's coups d'etat.

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

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

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.

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

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.

Youth should be a savings bank.

We expect everything and are prepared for nothing.

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

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

There is a transcendent power in example.

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

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

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

When fresh sorrows have caused us to take some steps in the right way, we may not complain. We have invested in a life annuity, but the income remains.

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

The heart has always the pardoning power.

Attention is a silent and perpetual flattery.

Happiness and Virtue clasp hands and walk together.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

What is resignation? It is putting God between one's self and one's grief.

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

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

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.

The law of common sense.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

Our vanity is the constant enemy of our dignity.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

When any one tells you that he belongs to no party, you may at any rate be sure that he does not belong to yours.

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

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

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.