Sophie swetchine quotes

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.

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

Piety softens all that courage bears.

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

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

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

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.

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

To have ideas is to gather flowers; to think is to weave them into garlands.

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

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.

Respect is a serious thing in him who feels it, and the height of honor for him who inspires the feeling.

Strength alone knows conflict, weakness is born vanquished.

I love victory, but I love not triumph.

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.

People read every thing nowadays, except books.

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

Miracles are God's coups d'etat.

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

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

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.

Silence is like nightfall. Objects are lost in it insensibly.

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

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

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

We reform others unconsciously when we walk uprightly.

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.

Those who make us happy are always thankful to us for being so; their gratitude is the reward of their benefits.

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

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

There are not good things enough in life to indemnify us for the neglect of a single duty.

By becoming unhappy, we sometimes learn how to be less so.

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

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

We expect everything and are prepared for nothing.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

What I value most next to eternity is time.

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?

Our vanity is the constant enemy of our dignity.

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.

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

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.

The very might of the human intellect reveals its limits.

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.

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.

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

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

Repentance is accepted remorse.

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.

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.

The ideal friendship is to feel as one while remaining two.

There are minds constructed like the eyes of certain insects, which discern, with admirable distinctness, the most delicate lineaments and finest veins of the leaf which bears them, but are totally unable to take in the ensemble of the plant or shrub. When error has effected an entrance into such minds, it remains there impregnable, because no general view assists them in throwing off the chance impression of the moment.

There are words which are worth as much as the best actions, for they contain the germ of them all.

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.

God has prohibited despair.

The heart has always the pardoning power.

Feeling loves a subdued light.

He who has never denied himself for the sake of giving has but glanced at the joys of charity.

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

Happiness and Virtue clasp hands and walk together.

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

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

As we advance in life the circle of our pains enlarges, while that of our pleasures contracts.

Attention is a silent and perpetual flattery.

Suspicion has its dupes, as well as credulity.

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

There are two ways of attaining an important end, force and perseverance; the silent power of the latter grows irresistible with time.

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

Youth should be a savings bank.

Providence has hidden a charm in difficult undertakings, which is appreciated only by those who dare to grapple with them.

The law of common sense.

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.

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

One must be a somebody before they can have an enemy. One must be a force before he can be resisted by another force.

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

Antiquity is a species of aristocracy with which it is not easy to be on visiting terms.

In this world of change naught which comes stays and naught which goes is lost.

Old age is not one of the beauties of creation, but it is one of its harmonies. The law of contrasts is one of the laws of beauty. Under the conditions of our climate, shadow gives light its worth; sternness enhances mildness; solemnity, splendor. Varying proportions of size support and subserve one another.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

We deceive ourselves when we fancy that only weakness needs support. Strength needs it far more.

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.

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

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

We are rich only through what we give.

Years do not make sages; they only make old men.

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

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!

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.

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

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

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

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.

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?"

Our faults afflict us more than our good deeds console. Pain is ever uppermost in the conscience as in the heart.

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

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

There is a transcendent power in example.

A friendship will be young after the lapse of half a century; a passion is old at the end of three months.

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

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

Travel is the frivolous part of serious lives, and the serious part of frivolous ones.

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

Let us resist the opinion of the world fearlessly, provided only that our self-respect grows in proportion to our indifference.

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

Kindness causes us to learn, and to forget, many things.

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.

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

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.

A good, finished scandal, fully armed and equipped, such as circulates in the world, is rarely the production of a single individual, or even of a single coterie. It sees the light in one; is rocked and nurtured in another; is petted, developed, and attains its growth in a third; and receives its finishing touches only after passing through a multitude of hands. It is a child that can count a host of fathers--all ready to disown it.

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

To love deeply in one direction makes us more loving in all others.

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.

A malicious enemy is better than a clumsy friend.