Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, marquise de Sevigne Quotes

I know of no sorrow greater than that occasioned by a delay of the post.

We must always live in hope; without that consolation there would be no living.

winter is past, and we have a prospect of spring that is superior to spring itself.

I am persuaded that the greater part of our complaints arise from want of exercise.

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.

good and evil travel on the same road, but they leave different impressions.

The heart never becomes wrinkled.

Why do we discover faults so much more readily than perfection.

Nothing is so capable of overturning a good intention as to show a distrust of it; to be suspected for an enemy, is often sufficient to make a person become one.

Long life will sometimes obscure the star of fame.

if I inflict wounds, I heal them.

The heart has no wrinkles.

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.

Faith creates the virtues in which it believes.

It is sometimes best to slip over thoughts and not go to the bottom of them.

Not to find pleasure in serious reading gives a pastel coloring to the mind.

... we ought to be astonished at nothing; for what do we not meet with in our journey through life?

. . . it seldom happens, I think, that a man has the civility to die when all the world wishes it.

There is no one who does not represent a danger to someone.

Thicken your religion a little. It is evaporating altogether by being subtilized.

There is nothing so lovely as to be beautiful. Beauty is a gift of God and we should cherish it as such.

. . . this life is a perpetual chequer-work of good and evil, pleasure and pain. When in possession of what we desire, we are only so much the nearer losing it; and when at a distance from it, we live in expectation of enjoying it again.

If we could have a little patience, we should escape much mortification; time takes away as much as it gives.

When I step into this library, I cannot understand why I ever step out of it.

Reason bears disgrace, courage combats it, patience surmounts it.

The world has no long injustices.

We like no noise unless we make it ourselves.

We are so fond of hearing ourselves spoken of, that, be it good or ill, it is still pleasing.

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.

Racine will pass away like the taste for coffee.

Oh Dear! How unfortunate I am not to have anyone to weep with!

I dislike clocks with second-hands; they cut up life into too small pieces.

True friendship is never serene.

... 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.

There is nobody who is not dangerous for someone.

Ah, what a grudge I owe physicians! what mummery is their art!

I love you so passionately, that I hide a great part of my love, so as not to oppress you with it.

It is the fine rain that soaks us through.

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.

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.

. . .the most astonishing, the most surprising, the most marvelous, the most miraculous. . . the greatest, the least, the rarest, the most common, the most public, the most private till today. . . I cannot bring myself to tell you: guess what it is.

We like so much to hear people talk of us and of our motives, that we are charmed even when they abuse us.

Fortune is always on the side of the largest battalions.

In all nations truth is the most sublime, the most simple, the most difficult, and yet the most natural thing.

It is day by day that we go forward; today we are as we were yesterday and tomorrow we shall be like ourselves today. So we go on without being aware of it, and this is one of the miracles of Providence that I so love.

When we reckon without Providence, we must frequently reckon twice.

Friendships take work. Use disagreements as opportunity to come out better on the other side

It is freezing fit to split a stone.