Sophie Swetchine quotes

We reform others unconsciously when we walk uprightly.
-- Sophie Swetchine

#Reform #Walks

There is a transcendent power in example.
-- Sophie Swetchine

#Example

The chains which cramp us most are those which weigh on us least.
-- Sophie Swetchine

#Cramps #Chains

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

#Years #Youth #Aging

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

#Happiness #Art #Sick

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

#Character #Men #Judging

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.
-- Sophie Swetchine

#Individuality #Might #Primitive

Indulgence is lovely in the sinless; toleration, adorable in the pious and believing heart.
-- Sophie Swetchine

#Believe #Heart #Adorable

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

#Death #Love Is #Inspire

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

#Men #Justice #Injustice

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

#Flow #Littles #Moderation

Piety softens all that courage bears.
-- Sophie Swetchine

#Bears #Piety

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

#Reason #Labor #Piety

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

#Pride #Would Be #Remember

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

#Pride #Destiny #Men

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

#Distance #Procrastination #Grace

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?
-- Sophie Swetchine

#Pieces #Riches #Silver

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

#Careers #America #Age

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

#Soul #Return #Indifference

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

#Humanity #Poor #Insignificant

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.
-- Sophie Swetchine

#Grief #Winter #Youth

In a healthy state of the organism all wounds have a tendency to heal.
-- Sophie Swetchine

#Healthy #States #Tendencies

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

#Liberty #Rewards

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

#Compassion #Gun #People

A malicious enemy is better than a clumsy friend.
-- Sophie Swetchine

#Enemy #Malicious

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

#Heart #Intellect #Ennui

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.
-- Sophie Swetchine

#Mean #Errors #Race

We are often prophets to others only because we are our own historians.
-- Sophie Swetchine

#Experience #Prophet #Historian

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

#Faith #Life Is Like #Burning

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

#Faith #Believe #Inventory

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.
-- Sophie Swetchine

#Apples #One Day #World

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

#Inferiority #Flattery #Dangerous

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

#Future #Past #Looking To The Future

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.
-- Sophie Swetchine

#Grief #Joy #Veils

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

#Economy

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

#Ignorant #Faults #Certain

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

#Faults #Encounters #Insufferable

Feeling loves a subdued light.
-- Sophie Swetchine

#Light #Feelings #Sensibility

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

#Grief #Sorrow

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.
-- Sophie Swetchine

#Real #Sorrow #Delicacy

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.
-- Sophie Swetchine

#Sorrow #May #Way

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.
-- Sophie Swetchine

#Simple #Childhood #Firsts

Suspicion has its dupes, as well as credulity.
-- Sophie Swetchine

#Dupes #Suspicion #Wells

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.
-- Sophie Swetchine

#Grief #Humility #Pride

Time is the shower of Danae; each drop is golden.
-- Sophie Swetchine

#Time #Golden #Showers

I love victory, but I love not triumph.
-- Sophie Swetchine

#Victory #Triumph

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

#Ambition #Character #Mark

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.
-- Sophie Swetchine

#Night #Age #Magnificence

Old age is not one of the beauties of creation, but it is one of its harmonies.
-- Sophie Swetchine

#Age #Harmony #Creation

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.
-- Sophie Swetchine

#Party #Political #May

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!
-- Sophie Swetchine

#Daughter #Children #Tears

The law of common sense.
-- Sophie Swetchine

#Law #Common Sense #Common

He who has ceased to enjoy his friend's superiority has ceased to love him.
-- Sophie Swetchine

#Friends #Enjoy #Superiority

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

#Friendship #Unhappy #Asylums

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.
-- Sophie Swetchine

#God #May #Atoms

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.
-- Sophie Swetchine

#God #Earth #Looks

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

#Health #Men #Roots

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

#Honesty #Men #People

Men are always invoking justice; yet it is justice which should make them tremble.
-- Sophie Swetchine

#Men #Justice #Should

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

#Love #Cold #Dare

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

#Memories #Lost #Steadfast

The very might of the human intellect reveals its limits.
-- Sophie Swetchine

#Mind #Limits #Might

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

#Men #Divine #Misfortunes

True poets, like great artists, have scarcely any childhood, and no old age.
-- Sophie Swetchine

#Artist #Childhood #Poetry

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.
-- Sophie Swetchine

#Prayer #Speech #Hours

People read every thing nowadays, except books.
-- Sophie Swetchine

#Book #Reading #People

Consolation heaps without contact; somewhat like the blessed air which we need but to breathe.
-- Sophie Swetchine

#Blessed #Air #Needs

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.
-- Sophie Swetchine

#Law #Practice #Common Sense

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.
-- Sophie Swetchine

#Retirement #Flow #Obstacles

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

#Deserve #Falsehood

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

#Men #Perfection #Chimera

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.
-- Sophie Swetchine

#Love #Heart #Reflection

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.
-- Sophie Swetchine

#Love #Dust #Evil

There is nothing at all in life, except what we put there.
-- Sophie Swetchine

#Life

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

#Liberty #Doe #Excess

We recognize the action of God in great things: we exclude it in small. We forget that the Lord of eternity is also the Lord of the hour.
-- Sophie Swetchine

#God #Action #Forget

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.
-- Sophie Swetchine

#God #Christian #Moving