Sophie Swetchine quotes
Sophie Swetchine (1782–1857): Russian salon-holder. The library holds 56 quotes by Sophie Swetchine. The 56 below are the most quoted; search the library in the maker for the rest.
Often about: life, faith, grief, time, power, war
The best-known Sophie Swetchine quotes
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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.
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Life grows dark as we go on, till only one clear light is left shining on it, and that is faith.
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Resignation is putting God between one’s self and one’s grief.
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There are words which are worth as much as the best actions, for they contain the germ of them all.
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The most dangerous of all flattery is the inferiority of those about us.
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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.
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How easy it is to be amiable in the midst of happiness and success!
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We are always looking into the future, but we see only the past.
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In the world’s opinion marriage, as in a play, winds up everything; whereas it is, in fact, the beginning of everything.
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The ideal of friendship is to feel as one while remaining two.
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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.
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We must labour unceasingly to render our piety reasonable, and our reason pious.
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The root of sanctity is sanity. A man must be healthy before he can be holy. We bathe first, and then perfume.
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It is not on great occasions only that we are required to be faithful to the will of God; occasions constantly occur, and we should be surprised to perceive how much our spiritual advancement depends on small obediences.
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Strength needs support far more than weakness. A feather sustains itself long in the air.
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To have ideas is to gather flowers; to think is to weave them into garlands.
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Let our lives be pure as snow-fields, where our footsteps leave a mark, but not a stain.
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We do not judge men by what they are in themselves, but by what they are relatively to us.
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In a healthy state of the organism all wounds have a tendency to heal.
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In youth we feel richer for every new illusion; in maturer years, for every one we lose.
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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.
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There are times when it would seem as if God fished with a line, and the devil with a net.
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The chains which cramp us most are those which weigh on us least.
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If it were ever allowable to forget what is due to superiority of rank, it would be when the privileged themselves remember it.
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Liberty has no actual rights which are not grafted upon justice.
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Virtue is the daughter of Religion. Her sole treasure is her tears.
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Liberty must be a mighty thing, for by it God punishes and rewards nations.
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Error, sterile in itself, produces only by means of the portion of truth which it contains.
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Travel is the frivolous part of serious lives, and the serious part of frivolous ones.
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Time is a wave which never murmurs, because there is no obstacle to its flow.
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True poets, like great artists, have scarcely any childhood, and no old age.
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Indifferent souls never part. Impassioned souls part, and return to one another, because they can do no better.
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There is, by God’s grace, an immeasurable distance between late and too late.
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We are often prophets to others only because we are our own historians.
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One must be somebody in order to have an enemy. One must be a force before he can be resisted by another force.
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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 dishonourable.
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The symptoms of compassion and benevolence, in some people, are like those minute guns which warn you that you are in deadly peril!
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“Who will guard the guards?” says a Latin verse,—“Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?” I answer, “The enemy.” It is the enemy who keeps the sentinel watchful.
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Strength alone knows conflict; weakness is below even defeat, and is born vanquished.
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The injustice of men subserves the justice of God, and often his mercy.
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How can that gift leave a trace which has left no void?
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We reform others unconsciously when we walk uprightly.
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We expect everything, and are prepared for nothing.
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Time is the shower of Danae; each drop is golden.
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Years do not make sages; they only make old men.
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Our vanity is the constant enemy of our dignity.
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Suspicion has its dupes, as well as credulity.
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A man must be healthy before he can be holy.
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The heart has always the pardoning power.
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Piety softens all that courage bears.
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Repentance is accepted remorse.
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Feeling loves a subdued light.
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Youth ought to be a savings’ bank.
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Weakness is born vanquished.
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Youth should be a savings-bank.
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The overflow of a softened heart.