Sophie Swetchine Quotes

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

The only true method of action in this world is to be in it, but not of it.

Feeling loves a subdued light.

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

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

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

What I value most next to eternity is time.

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

We are rich only through what we give.

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

Miracles are God's coups d'etat.

Let our lives be pure as snowfields, where our steps leave a mark but no stain.

Those who have suffered much are like those who know many languages; they have learned to understand and be understood by all.

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.

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

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.

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?

It would seem that by our sorrows only are we called to a knowledge of the Infinite. Are we happy? The limits of life constrain us on all sides.

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

Suspicion has its dupes, as well as credulity.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Piety softens all that courage bears.

I love victory, but I love not triumph.

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

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.

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.

The very might of the human intellect reveals its limits.

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

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

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

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

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

The law of common sense.

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

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!

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

People read every thing nowadays, except books.

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.

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

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

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.