Top 120 Sophie Swetchine Quotes (2025 Update)

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

— Sophie Swetchine

2. “We expect everything and are prepared for nothing.”

— Sophie Swetchine

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

— Sophie Swetchine

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

— Sophie Swetchine

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

— Sophie Swetchine

6. “A malicious enemy is better than a clumsy friend.”

— Sophie Swetchine

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

— Sophie Swetchine

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

— Sophie Swetchine

9. “There is, by God’s grace, an immeasurable distance between late and too late.”

— Sophie Swetchine

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

— Sophie Swetchine

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

— Sophie Swetchine

12. “The law of common sense.”

— Sophie Swetchine

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

— Sophie Swetchine

14. “Time is the shower of Danae; each drop is golden.”

— Sophie Swetchine

15. “Miracles are God’s coups d’etat.”

— Sophie Swetchine

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

— Sophie Swetchine

17. “People read every thing nowadays, except books.”

— Sophie Swetchine

18. “Poor humanity! – so dependent, so insignificant, and yet so great.”

— Sophie Swetchine

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

— Sophie Swetchine

20. “Our vanity is the constant enemy of our dignity.”

— Sophie Swetchine

21. “Happiness and Virtue clasp hands and walk together.”

— Sophie Swetchine

22. “The mind wears the colors of the soul, as a valet those of his master.”

— Sophie Swetchine

23. “Youth should be a savings bank.”

— Sophie Swetchine

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

— Sophie Swetchine

25. “Silence is like nightfall. Objects are lost in it insensibly.”

— Sophie Swetchine

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

— Sophie Swetchine

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

— Sophie Swetchine

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

— Sophie Swetchine

29. “The world has no sympathy with any but positive griefs. It will pity you for what you lose; never for what you lack.”

— Sophie Swetchine

30. “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.”

— Sophie Swetchine

31. “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.”

— Sophie Swetchine

32. “Strength alone knows conflict, weakness is born vanquished.”

— Sophie Swetchine

33. “I love victory, but I love not triumph.”

— Sophie Swetchine

34. “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.”

— Sophie Swetchine

35. “We reform others unconsciously when we walk uprightly.”

— Sophie Swetchine

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

— Sophie Swetchine

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

— Sophie Swetchine

38. “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!”

— Sophie Swetchine

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

— Sophie Swetchine

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

— Sophie Swetchine

41. “Death is the justification of all the ways of the Christian, the last end of all his sacrifices, the touch of the Great Master which completes the picture.”

— Sophie Swetchine

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

— Sophie Swetchine

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

— Sophie Swetchine

44. “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.”

— Sophie Swetchine

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

— Sophie Swetchine

46. “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.”

— Sophie Swetchine

47. “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.”

— Sophie Swetchine

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

— Sophie Swetchine

49. “Loving souls are like paupers. They live on what is given them.”

— Sophie Swetchine

50. “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.”

— Sophie Swetchine