Suzanne Curchod Quotes

Recognized probity is the surest of all oaths.

Obstinacy is ever most positive when it is most in the wrong.

Make your best thoughts into action.

Order in a house ought to be like the machinery in opera, whose effect produces great pleasure, but whose ends must be hid.

For the honest people, relations increase with the years. For the vicious, inconveniences increase. Inconstancy is the defect of vice; the influence of habit is one of the qualities of virtue.

Fortune does not change [people], it unmasks them.

Women do not often have it in their power to give like men, but they forgive like Heaven.

A pure style in writing results from the rejection of everything superfluous.

One of the first observations to make in conversation is the state, or the character, and the education of the person to whom we speak.

It is never permissible to say, I say.

How immense to us appear the sins we have not committed.

Too many wish to be happy before becoming wise.

The revolting details of childbirth had been hidden from me with such care that I was as surprised as I was horrified, and I cannot help thinking that the vows most women are made to take are very foolhardy. I doubt whether they would willingly go to the altar to swear that they will allow themselves to be broken on the wheel every nine months.

The most subtle flattery that a woman can receive is by actions, not by words.

The quarrels of lovers are like summer storms. Everything is more beautiful when they have passed.

When death gives us a long lease of life, it takes as hostages all those whom we have loved.

Innocence and mystery never dwell long together.

Where love and wisdom drink out of the same cup, in this everyday world, it is the exception.

To love one that is great, is almost to be great one's self.

Elegance is exquisite polish.

The more heart, the more sorrow.

Romance is the poetry of literature.

The heart of a good man is the sanctuary of God in this world.

Love is the only possession which we can carry with us beyond the grave.

The old age of women is bearable only on condition that they do not take up any room, do not make any noise, do not demand any service; on condition that they render all the service that is expected of them, and actually have no existence except for the good of others.

Remarkable places are like the summits of rocks; eagles and reptiles only can get there.

Indulgence, twin sister of guilt.

One can impose silence on sentiment, but one can not give it limits.

Love is the pass-key to the heart.

Want of perseverance is the great fault of women in everything--morals, attention to health, friendship, and so on. It cannot be too often repeated that women never reach the end of anything through want of perseverance.

It is often a sign of wit not to show it, and not to see that others want it.

A woman must be truly refined to incite chivalry in the heart of a man.

It were no virtue to bear calamities if we did not feel them.

Our own cast-off sorrows are not sufficient to constitute sympathy for others.

You may be more prodigal of time than of money.

Fiction is a potent agent for good--in the hands of the good.

Obligation is the bitterest thraldom.

Gallantry thrives most in the atmosphere of the court.

Dignity and love do not blend.

In looking around me seeking for miserable resources against the heaviness of time, I open a book and I say to myself, as the cat to the fox: I have only one good turn, but I need no other.

That woman is happiest whose life is passed in the shadow of a manly, loving heart.

Reason ought not, like vanity, to adorn herself with ancient parchments, and the display of a genealogical tree; more dignified in her proceedings, and proud of her immortal nature, she ought to derive everything from herself.