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Sophie Swetchine Quotes

d. 1857

Anne Sophie Swetchine (November 22, 1782–1857), known as Madame Swetchine, was a Russian mystic who converted to Catholicism in 1815 and as a result was forced to emigrate to Paris.

Also known as: Madame Swetchine

Random Sophie Swetchine quote

114 quotes

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

Attributed Forty Thousand Quotations (1917)

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.

Attributed Forty Thousand Quotations (1917)

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.

Attributed Forty Thousand Quotations (1917)

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

Attributed Forty Thousand Quotations (1917)

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!

Attributed Forty Thousand Quotations (1917)

I can understand the things that afflict mankind, but I often marvel at those which console. An atom may wound, but God alone can heal.

Attributed Forty Thousand Quotations (1917)

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

Attributed Forty Thousand Quotations (1917)

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.

Attributed Forty Thousand Quotations (1917)

There is a transcendent power in example. We reform others unconsciously when we walk uprightly.

Attributed Forty Thousand Quotations (1917)

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

Attributed Forty Thousand Quotations (1917)

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.

Attributed Forty Thousand Quotations (1917)

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.

Attributed Forty Thousand Quotations (1917)

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.

Attributed Forty Thousand Quotations (1917)

It would seem that by our sorrows only we are called to a knowledge of the Infinite. Are we happy? The limits of life constrain us on all sides.

Attributed Forty Thousand Quotations (1917)

“Prayer,” says St. Jerome, “is a groan.” Ah! our groans are prayers as well. The very cry of distress is an involuntary appeal to that invisible Power whose aid the soul invokes.

Attributed Forty Thousand Quotations (1917)

The smile upon the old man’s lip, like the last rays of the setting sun, pierces the heart with a sweet and sad emotion. There is still a ray, there is still a smile; but they may be the last.

Attributed Forty Thousand Quotations (1917)

Feeling loves a subdued light.

Attributed Forty Thousand Quotations (1917)

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.

Attributed Forty Thousand Quotations (1917)

Piety softens all that courage bears.

Attributed Forty Thousand Quotations (1917)

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.

Attributed Forty Thousand Quotations (1917)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Sophie Swetchine (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.