Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, marquise de Sevigne
Nothing is more certain of destroying any good feeling that may be cherished towards us than to show distrust. To be suspected as an enemy is often enough to make a man become so; the whole matter is over, there is no farther use of guarding against it. On the contrary, confidence leads us naturally to act kindly, we are affected by the good opinion which others entertain of us, and we are not easily induced to lose it.Collection: Men
There are twelve hours in the day, and above fifty in the night.Collection: Sleep
I love you so passionately, that I hide a great part of my love, so as not to oppress you with it.Collection: Love
Religious people spend so much time with their confessors because they like to talk about themselves.Collection: Religious
If you are not feeling well, if you have not slept, chocolate will revive you. But you have no chocolate! I think of that again and again! My dear, how will you ever manage?Collection: Thinking
We are never satisfied with having done well; and in endeavoring to do better, we do much worse.Collection: Done
When I step into this library, I cannot understand why I ever step out of it.Collection: Reading
good and evil travel on the same road, but they leave different impressions.Collection: Evil
I dislike clocks with second-hands; they cut up life into too small pieces.Collection: Time
Why do we discover faults so much more readily than perfection.Collection: Perfection
I pity those who have no taste for reading.Collection: Book
there are some people who never acknowledge themselves in the wrong; God help them!Collection: People
I fear nothing so much as a man who is witty all day long.Collection: Witty
The human heart will never wrinkleCollection: Heart
I know of no sorrow greater than that occasioned by a delay of the post.Collection: Sorrow
There is nobody who is not dangerous for someone.Collection: Danger
The desire to be singular and to astonish by ways out of the common seems to me to be the source of many virtues.Collection: Desire
True friendship is never serene.Collection: Friendship
. . . it seldom happens, I think, that a man has the civility to die when all the world wishes it.Collection: Men
We must always live in hope; without that consolation there would be no living.Collection: Hope
If we could have a little patience, we should escape much mortification; time takes away as much as it gives.Collection: Patience
It is a disgraceful thing to be ignorant.Collection: Ignorance
Not to find pleasure in serious reading gives a pastel coloring to the mind.Collection: Book
There is no real evil in life, except great pain; all the rest is imaginary, and depends on the light in which we view thingsCollection: Pain
long journeys are strange things: if we were always to continue in the same mind we are in at the end of a journey, we should never stir from the place we were then in: but Providence in kindness to us causes us to forget it. It is much the same with lying-in women. Heaven permits this forgetfulness that the world may be peopled, and that folks may take journeys to Provence.Collection: Travel
Faith creates the virtues in which it believes.Collection: Faith
It is thus that we walk through the world like the blind, not knowing whither we are going, regarding as bad what is good, regarding as good what is bad, and ever in entire ignorance.Collection: Ignorance
. . . long journeys are strange things: if we were always to continue in the same mind we are in at the end of a journey, we should never stir from the place we were then in . . .Collection: Journey
the days, and the months, and the years, pass so swiftly, that I can no longer retain them. Time, in its flight, hurries me away, in spite of myself; in vain I endeavor to stop him, he drags me along: the thought of this alarms me.Collection: Time
Happiness, like misfortunes, never comes alone.Collection: Happiness
... we ought to be astonished at nothing; for what do we not meet with in our journey through life?Collection: Journey
Were it not for the amusement of our books, we should be moped to death for want of occupation. It rains incessantly. ... we tickle ourselves in order to laugh; to so low an ebb are we reduced.Collection: Rain
Occupation is the best safeguard for women under all circumstances--mental or physical, or both. Cupid extinguishes his torch in the atmosphere of industry.Collection: Atmosphere
It is not always sorrow that opens the fountains of the eyes.Collection: Eye
Oh Dear! How unfortunate I am not to have anyone to weep with!Collection: Friendship
It is sometimes best to slip over thoughts and not go to the bottom of them.Collection: Sometimes
... Providence conducts us with so much kindness through the different periods of our life, that we scarcely feel the change; our days glide gently and imperceptibly along, like the motion of the hour-hand, which we cannot discover. ... we advance gradually; we are the same to-day as yesterday, and to-morrow as to-day: thus we go on, without perceiving it, which is a miracle of the Providence I adore.Collection: Kindness
matrimony is a very dangerous disorder; I had rather drink.Collection: Drink
We like so much to talk of ourselves that we are never weary of those private interviews with a lover during the course of whole years, and for the same reason the devout like to spend much time with their confessor; it is the pleasure of talking of themselves, even though it be to talk ill.Collection: Talking
Thicken your religion a little. It is evaporating altogether by being subtilized.Collection: Religion
It is the fine rain that soaks us through.Collection: Rain
war often breaks out when there is the most talk of peace.Collection: Peace
We are so fond of hearing ourselves spoken of, that, be it good or ill, it is still pleasing.Collection: Hearing
We are always on the side of those who speak last.Collection: Lasts
... truth ... carries authority with it; while falsehood and lies skulk under a load of words, without having the power of persuasion; the more they attempt to show themselves, the more they are entangled.Collection: Lying
Reason bears disgrace, courage combats it, patience surmounts it.Collection: Bears
Fortune is always on the side of the largest battalions.Collection: Peace
Gloom and sadness are poison to us, and the origin of hysterics. You are right in thinking that this disease is in the imagination; you have defined it perfectly; it is vexation which causes it to spring up, and fear that supports it.Collection: Spring
We like so much to hear people talk of us and of our motives, that we are charmed even when they abuse us.Collection: People