Sophie Swetchine
In a healthy state of the organism all wounds have a tendency to heal.Collection: Healthy
We are amused through the intellect, but it is the heart that saves us from ennui.Collection: Heart
We are often prophets to others only because we are our own historians.Collection: Experience
The injustice of men subserves the justice of God, and often His mercy.Collection: Men
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.Collection: Sorrow
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?"Collection: Confused
The inventory of my faith for this lower world is soon made out. I believe in Him who made it.Collection: Faith
A malicious enemy is better than a clumsy friend.Collection: Enemy
He who has ceased to enjoy his friend's superiority has ceased to love him.Collection: Friends
Time is the shower of Danae; each drop is golden.Collection: Time
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.Collection: God
Suspicion has its dupes, as well as credulity.Collection: Dupes
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.Collection: Sorrow
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.Collection: Simple
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.Collection: Grief
America has begun her career at the culminating point of life, as Adam did at the age of thirty.Collection: Careers
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.Collection: Real
I love victory, but I love not triumph.Collection: Victory
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.Collection: Night
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.Collection: Party
We must labor unceasingly to render our piety reasonable, and our reason pious.Collection: Reason
Piety softens all that courage bears.Collection: Bears
It is a little stream, which flows softly, but freshens everything along its course.Collection: Littles
The very might of the human intellect reveals its limits.Collection: Mind
The root of sanctity is sanity. A man must be healthy before he can be holy. We bathe first, and then perfume.Collection: Health
The beings who appear cold, but are only timid, adore where they dare to love.Collection: Love
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!Collection: Daughter
Friendship is like those ancient altars where the unhappy, and even the guilty, found a sure asylum.Collection: Friendship
Men do not go out to meet misfortune as we do. They learn it; and we--we divine it.Collection: Men
God Himself allows certain faults; and often we say, "I have deserved to err; I have deserved to be ignorant.Collection: Ignorant
True poets, like great artists, have scarcely any childhood, and no old age.Collection: Artist
My sole defense against the natural horror which death inspires is to love beyond it.Collection: Death
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.Collection: Law
There are but two future verbs which man may appropriate confidently and without pride: "I shall suffer," and "I shall die.Collection: Pride
The law of common sense.Collection: Law
People read every thing nowadays, except books.Collection: Book
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.Collection: Grief
One must be a somebody before they can have an enemy. One must be a force before he can be resisted by another force.Collection: Enemy
Since there must be chimeras, why is not perfection the chimera of all men?Collection: Men
There are words which are worth as much as the best actions, for they contain the germ of them all.Collection: Germs
Our vanity is the constant enemy of our dignity.Collection: Vanity
Faith, amid the disorders of a sinful life, is like the lamp burning in an ancient tomb.Collection: Faith
The most dangerous of all flattery is the inferiority of those about us.Collection: Inferiority
Indifferent souls never part. Impassioned souls part, and return to one another, because they can do no better.Collection: Soul
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.Collection: Individuality
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.Collection: Prayer
If it were ever allowable to forget what is due to superiority of rank, it would be when the privileged themselves remember it.Collection: Pride
Where there is a question of economy, I prefer privation.Collection: Economy
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.Collection: God