Top 120 Sophie Swetchine Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “Indulgence is lovely in the sinless; toleration, adorable in the pious and believing heart.”

— Sophie Swetchine

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

— Sophie Swetchine

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

— Sophie Swetchine

54. “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.”

— Sophie Swetchine

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

— Sophie Swetchine

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

— Sophie Swetchine

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

— Sophie Swetchine

58. “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.”

— Sophie Swetchine

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

— Sophie Swetchine

60. “Feeling loves a subdued light.”

— Sophie Swetchine

61. “Attention is a silent and perpetual flattery.”

— Sophie Swetchine

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

— Sophie Swetchine

63. “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.”

— Sophie Swetchine

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

— Sophie Swetchine

65. “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.”

— Sophie Swetchine

66. “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.”

— Sophie Swetchine

67. “What is resignation? It is putting God between one’s self and one’s grief.”

— Sophie Swetchine

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

— Sophie Swetchine

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

— Sophie Swetchine

70. “Kindness causes us to learn, and to forget, many things.”

— Sophie Swetchine

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

— Sophie Swetchine

72. “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?””

— Sophie Swetchine

73. “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.”

— Sophie Swetchine

74. “The heart has always the pardoning power.”

— Sophie Swetchine

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

— Sophie Swetchine

76. “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.”

— Sophie Swetchine

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

— Sophie Swetchine

78. “There is a transcendent power in example.”

— Sophie Swetchine

79. “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.”

— Sophie Swetchine

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

— Sophie Swetchine

81. “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.”

— Sophie Swetchine

82. “The very might of the human intellect reveals its limits.”

— Sophie Swetchine

83. “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.”

— Sophie Swetchine

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

— Sophie Swetchine

85. “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.”

— Sophie Swetchine

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

— Sophie Swetchine

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

— Sophie Swetchine

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

— Sophie Swetchine

89. “Men do not go out to meet misfortune as we do. They learn it; and we – we divine it.”

— Sophie Swetchine

90. “Years do not make sages; they only make old men.”

— Sophie Swetchine

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

— Sophie Swetchine

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

— Sophie Swetchine

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

— Sophie Swetchine

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

— Sophie Swetchine

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

— Sophie Swetchine

96. “We are rich only through what we give.”

— Sophie Swetchine

97. “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.”

— Sophie Swetchine

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

— Sophie Swetchine

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

— Sophie Swetchine

100. “Repentance is accepted remorse.”

— Sophie Swetchine