Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, marquise de Sevigne Quotes

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

There is no real evil in life, except great pain; all the rest is imaginary, and depends on the light in which we view things

The heart has no wrinkles.

If you are not feeling well, if you have not slept, chocolate will revive you. But you have no chocolate! I think of that again and again! My dear, how will you ever manage?

We are never satisfied with having done well; and in endeavoring to do better, we do much worse.

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.

True friendship is never serene.

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

There are twelve hours in the day, and above fifty in the night.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

It is not always sorrow that opens the fountains of the eyes.

The desire to be singular and to astonish by ways out of the common seems to me to be the source of many virtues.

Religious people spend so much time with their confessors because they like to talk about themselves.

Truth and tears clear the way to a deep and lasting friendship. True friendship is never serene.

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

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

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

Fortune is always on the side of the largest battalions.

The human heart will never wrinkle

I fear nothing so much as a man who is witty all day long.

Faith creates the virtues in which it believes.

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

Nothing is more certain of destroying any good feeling that may be cherished towards us than to show distrust. To be suspected as an enemy is often enough to make a man become so; the whole matter is over, there is no farther use of guarding against it. On the contrary, confidence leads us naturally to act kindly, we are affected by the good opinion which others entertain of us, and we are not easily induced to lose it.

Long life will sometimes obscure the star of fame.

We like no noise unless we make it ourselves.

It is the fine rain that soaks us through.

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.

there are some people who never acknowledge themselves in the wrong; God help them!

. . . 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 . . .

matrimony is a very dangerous disorder; I had rather drink.

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.

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

There is nobody who is not dangerous for someone.

It is a disgraceful thing to be ignorant.

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.

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.

. . . 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.

The world has no long injustices.

if I inflict wounds, I heal them.

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

. . .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.

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

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