Sophie Swetchine quotes
-
“We reform others unconsciously when we walk uprightly.”
-- Sophie Swetchine -
“There is a transcendent power in example.”
-- Sophie Swetchine -
“The chains which cramp us most are those which weigh on us least.”
-- Sophie Swetchine -
“In youth we feel richer for every new illusion; in maturer years, for every one we lose.”
-- Sophie Swetchine -
-
“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 -
“We do not judge men by what they are in themselves, but by what they are relatively to us.”
-- Sophie Swetchine -
“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 -
“Indulgence is lovely in the sinless; toleration, adorable in the pious and believing heart.”
-- Sophie Swetchine -
-
“My sole defense against the natural horror which death inspires is to love beyond it.”
-- Sophie Swetchine -
“The injustice of men subserves the justice of God, and often His mercy.”
-- Sophie Swetchine -
“It is a little stream, which flows softly, but freshens everything along its course.”
-- Sophie Swetchine -
-
“We must labor unceasingly to render our piety reasonable, and our reason pious.”
-- Sophie Swetchine -
“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 -
“There are but two future verbs which man may appropriate confidently and without pride: "I shall suffer," and "I shall die.”
-- Sophie Swetchine -
“There is, by God's grace, an immeasurable distance between late and too late.”
-- Sophie Swetchine -
-
“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 -
“America has begun her career at the culminating point of life, as Adam did at the age of thirty.”
-- Sophie Swetchine -
“Indifferent souls never part. Impassioned souls part, and return to one another, because they can do no better.”
-- Sophie Swetchine -
“Poor humanity!--so dependent, so insignificant, and yet so great.”
-- Sophie Swetchine -
-
“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 -
“In a healthy state of the organism all wounds have a tendency to heal.”
-- Sophie Swetchine -
“Liberty must be a mighty thing; for by it God punishes and rewards nations.”
-- Sophie Swetchine -
“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 -
-
“A malicious enemy is better than a clumsy friend.”
-- Sophie Swetchine -
“We are amused through the intellect, but it is the heart that saves us from ennui.”
-- Sophie Swetchine -
“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 -
“We are often prophets to others only because we are our own historians.”
-- Sophie Swetchine -
-
“Faith, amid the disorders of a sinful life, is like the lamp burning in an ancient tomb.”
-- Sophie Swetchine -
“The inventory of my faith for this lower world is soon made out. I believe in Him who made it.”
-- Sophie Swetchine -
“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 -
“The most dangerous of all flattery is the inferiority of those about us.”
-- Sophie Swetchine -
-
“We are always looking into the future, but we see only the past.”
-- Sophie Swetchine -
“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 -
“Where there is a question of economy, I prefer privation.”
-- Sophie Swetchine -
“God Himself allows certain faults; and often we say, "I have deserved to err; I have deserved to be ignorant.”
-- Sophie Swetchine -
-
“Only those faults which we encounter in ourselves are insufferable to us in others.”
-- Sophie Swetchine -
“If grief is to be mitigated, it must either wear itself out or be shared.”
-- Sophie Swetchine -
“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 -
-
“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 -
“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 -
“Suspicion has its dupes, as well as credulity.”
-- Sophie Swetchine -
“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 -
-
“Time is the shower of Danae; each drop is golden.”
-- Sophie Swetchine -
“I love victory, but I love not triumph.”
-- Sophie Swetchine -
“Impassioned characters never attain their mark till they have overshot it.”
-- Sophie Swetchine -
“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 -
-
“Old age is not one of the beauties of creation, but it is one of its harmonies.”
-- Sophie Swetchine -
“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 -
“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 -
-
“He who has ceased to enjoy his friend's superiority has ceased to love him.”
-- Sophie Swetchine -
“Friendship is like those ancient altars where the unhappy, and even the guilty, found a sure asylum.”
-- Sophie Swetchine -
“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 -
“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 -
-
“The root of sanctity is sanity. A man must be healthy before he can be holy. We bathe first, and then perfume.”
-- Sophie Swetchine -
“I like people to be saints; but I want them to be first and superlatively honest men.”
-- Sophie Swetchine -
“Men are always invoking justice; yet it is justice which should make them tremble.”
-- Sophie Swetchine -
“The beings who appear cold, but are only timid, adore where they dare to love.”
-- Sophie Swetchine -
-
“There is nothing steadfast in life but our memories. We are sure of keeping intact only that which we have lost.”
-- Sophie Swetchine -
“The very might of the human intellect reveals its limits.”
-- Sophie Swetchine -
“Men do not go out to meet misfortune as we do. They learn it; and we--we divine it.”
-- Sophie Swetchine -
“True poets, like great artists, have scarcely any childhood, and no old age.”
-- Sophie Swetchine -
-
“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 -
“People read every thing nowadays, except books.”
-- Sophie Swetchine -
“Consolation heaps without contact; somewhat like the blessed air which we need but to breathe.”
-- Sophie Swetchine -
“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 -
-
“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 -
“There are questions so indiscreet, that they deserve neither truth nor falsehood in reply.”
-- Sophie Swetchine -
“Since there must be chimeras, why is not perfection the chimera of all men?”
-- Sophie Swetchine -
“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 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 -
“There is nothing at all in life, except what we put there.”
-- Sophie Swetchine -
“The most culpable of the excesses of Liberty is the harm she does herself.”
-- Sophie Swetchine -
“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 -
-
“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
You may also like:
-
Aristotle
Philosopher -
Carl Schmitt
Philosopher -
Charles Baudelaire
Poet -
Edmund Burke
Statesman -
Emile M. Cioran
Philosopher -
Giambattista Vico
Philosopher -
Isaiah Berlin
Philosopher -
Jean-Baptiste Henri Lacordaire
Journalist -
Joseph de Maistre
Philosopher -
Julius Evola
Philosopher -
Suzanne Curchod
Writer -
Thomas Aquinas
Priest -
Thomas Hobbes
Philosopher -
Jules Amedee Barbey d'Aurevilly
Novelist
