Top 100 Sophie Swetchine Quotes
#1. 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.
Sophie Swetchine
#2. Since there must be chimeras, why is not perfection the chimera of all men?
Sophie Swetchine
#3. A friendship will be young after the lapse of half a century; a passion is old at the end of three months.
Sophie Swetchine
#4. It is a little stream, which flows softly, but freshens everything along its course.
Sophie Swetchine
#5. Travel is the frivolous part of serious lives, and the serious part of frivolous ones.
Sophie Swetchine
#6. 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
#7. The chains which cramp us most are those which weigh on us least.
Sophie Swetchine
#9. True poets, like great artists, have scarcely any childhood, and no old age.
Sophie Swetchine
#11. Old age is not one of the beauties of creation, but it is one of its harmonies.
Sophie Swetchine
#12. 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.
Sophie Swetchine
#14. The most culpable of the excesses of Liberty is the harm she does herself.
Sophie Swetchine
#15. Let us resist the opinion of the world fearlessly, provided only that our self-respect grows in proportion to our indifference.
Sophie Swetchine
#16. 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
#17. Loving souls are like paupers. They live on what is given them.
Sophie Swetchine
#18. 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
#19. Our faults afflict us more than our good deeds console. Pain is ever uppermost in the conscience as in the heart.
Sophie Swetchine
#20. 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
#21. In this world of change naught which comes stays and naught which goes is lost.
Sophie Swetchine
#22. The ideal friendship is to feel as one while remaining two.
Sophie Swetchine
#23. Silence is like nightfall. Objects are lost in it insensibly.
Sophie Swetchine
#24. 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?"
Sophie Swetchine
#25. Men are always invoking justice; yet it is justice which should make them tremble.
Sophie Swetchine
#26. We do not judge men by what they are in themselves, but by what they are relatively to us.
Sophie Swetchine
#27. The inventory of my faith for this lower world is soon made out. I believe in Him who made it.
Sophie Swetchine
#28. 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
#29. There are two ways of attaining an important end, force and perseverance; the silent power of the latter grows irresistible with time.
Sophie Swetchine
#30. The world has no sympathy with any but positive griefs. It will pity you for what you lose; never for what you lack
Sophie Swetchine
#31. My sole defense against the natural horror which death inspires is to love beyond it.
Sophie Swetchine
#33. 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
#34. There is nothing steadfast in life but our memories. We are sure of keeping intact only that which we have lost.
Sophie Swetchine
#35. Those who have suffered much are like those who know many languages; they have learned to understand and be understood by all.
Sophie Swetchine
#36. To have ideas is to gather flowers; to think is to weave them into garlands.
Sophie Swetchine
#38. We are always looking into the future, but we see only the past.
Sophie Swetchine
#40. 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
#41. Only those faults which we encounter in ourselves are insufferable to us in others.
Sophie Swetchine
#42. One must be a somebody before they can have a enemy. One must be a force before he can be resisted by another force.
Sophie Swetchine
#44. There are but two future verbs which man may appropriate confidently and without pride: "I shall suffer," and "I shall die.
Sophie Swetchine
#45. 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
#46. 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
#47. The beings who appear cold, but are only timid, adore where they dare to love.
Sophie Swetchine
#49. 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
#50. There is nothing at all in life, except what we put there.
Sophie Swetchine
#51. 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
#52. Providence has hidden a charm in difficult undertakings, which is appreciated only by those who dare to grapple with them.
Sophie Swetchine
#53. 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
#54. If grief is to be mitigated, it must either wear itself out or be shared.
Sophie Swetchine
#55. The mind wears the colors of the soul, as a valet those of his master.
Sophie Swetchine
#57. 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
#58. 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
#60. We must labor unceasingly to render our piety reasonable, and our reason pious.
Sophie Swetchine
#61. The injustice of men subserves the justice of God, and often His mercy.
Sophie Swetchine
#62. There are not good things enough in life to indemnify us for the neglect of a single duty.
Sophie Swetchine
#64. Indulgence is lovely in the sinless; toleration, adorable in the pious and believing heart.
Sophie Swetchine
#65. 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
#67. 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
#68. We are amused through the intellect, but it is the heart that saves us from ennui.
Sophie Swetchine
#70. America has begun her career at the culminating point of life, as Adam did at the age of thirty.
Sophie Swetchine
#71. God Himself allows certain faults; and often we say, I have deserved to err; I have deserved to be ignorant.
Sophie Swetchine
#72. Indifferent souls never part. Impassioned souls part, and return to one another, because they can do no better.
Sophie Swetchine
#73. 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.
Sophie Swetchine
#74. In youth we feel richer for every new illusion; in maturer years, for every one we lose.
Sophie Swetchine
#77. 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
#78. 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
#79. He who has never denied himself for the sake of giving has but glanced at the joys of charity.
Sophie Swetchine
#80. We deceive ourselves when we fancy that only weakness needs support. Strength needs it far more.
Sophie Swetchine
#81. He who has ceased to enjoy his friend's superiority has ceased to love him.
Sophie Swetchine
#82. There are questions so indiscreet, that they deserve neither truth nor falsehood in reply.
Sophie Swetchine
#83. 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.
Sophie Swetchine
#85. 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
#86. In this world of change, nothing which comes stays, and nothing which goes is lost.
Sophie Swetchine
#87. Antiquity is a species of aristocracy with which it is not easy to be on visiting terms.
Sophie Swetchine
#88. 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.
Sophie Swetchine
#89. The only true method of action in this world is to be in it, but not of it.
Sophie Swetchine
#90. The most dangerous of all flattery is the inferiority of those about us.
Sophie Swetchine
#91. 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
#92. Let our lives be pure as snowfields, where our steps leave a mark but no stain.
Sophie Swetchine
#93. Those who make us happy are always thankful to us for being so; their gratitude is the reward of their benefits.
Sophie Swetchine
#94. 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.
Sophie Swetchine
#95. Consolation heaps without contact; somewhat like the blessed air which we need but to breathe.
Sophie Swetchine
#96. I like people to be saints; but I want them to be first and superlatively honest men.
Sophie Swetchine
#97. Friendship is like those ancient altars where the unhappy, and even the guilty, found a sure asylum.
Sophie Swetchine
#98. By becoming unhappy, we sometimes learn how to be less so.
Sophie Swetchine
#99. 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
#100. What is resignation? It is putting God between one's self and one's grief.
Sophie Swetchine
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