Top 100 Madame De Stael Quotes
#1. The human mind always makes progress, but it is a progress in spirals.
Madame De Stael
#2. Superstition is related to this life, religion to the next; superstition is allied to fatality, religion to virtue; it is by the vivacity of earthly desires that we become superstitious; it is, on the contrary, by the sacrifice of these desires that we become religious.
Madame De Stael
#3. Divine Wisdom, intending to detain us some time on earth, has done well to cover with a veil the prospect of the life to come; for if our sight could clearly distinguish the opposite bank, who would remain on this tempestuous coast of time?
Madame De Stael
#5. All music, even if its occasion be a gay one, renders us pensive.
Madame De Stael
#6. However old a conjugal union, it still garners some sweetness. Winter has some cloudless days, and under the snow a few flowers still bloom.
Madame De Stael
#7. Purity of mind and conduct is the first glory of a woman.
Madame De Stael
#9. The greatest happiness is to transform one's feelings into action.
Madame De Stael
#10. In Italy, almost at every step, history and poetry add to the graces of nature, sweeten the memory of the past, and seem to preserve it in eternal youth.
Madame De Stael
#11. New doctrines ever displease the old. They like to fancy that the world has been losing wisdom, instead of gaining it, since they were young.
Madame De Stael
#12. The evil arising from mental improvement can be corrected only by a still further progress in that very improvement. Either morality is a fable, or the more enlightened we are, the more attached to it we become.
Madame De Stael
#13. There is not enough interest in life to spread over twenty-four hours when one can't sleep.
Madame De Stael
#14. To pray together, in whatever tongue or ritual, is the most tender brotherhood of hope and sympathy that man can contract in this life.
Madame De Stael
#15. The mind's pleasures are made to calm the tempests of the heart.
Madame De Stael
#16. Wit lies in recognizing the resemblance among things which differ and the difference between things which are alike.
Madame De Stael
#17. Enthusiasm gives life to what is invisible; and interest to what has no immediate action on our comfort in this world.
Madame De Stael
#18. You do not reach the sublime by degrees; the distance between it and the merely beautiful is infinite.
Madame De Stael
#20. When men do wrong, it is out of hardness; when women do wrong, it is out of weakness.
Madame De Stael
#22. Mystery such as is given of God is beyond the power of human penetration, yet not in opposition to it.
Madame De Stael
#24. [On Italian:] One may almost call it a language that talks of itself, and always seems more witty than its speakers.
Madame De Stael
#25. How true it is that, sooner or later, the' most rebellious must bow beneath the yoke of misfortune!
Madame De Stael
#26. Love, supreme power of the heart, mysterious enthusiasm that encloses in itself all poetry, all heroism, all religion!
Madame De Stael
#27. Happy the land where the writers are sad, the merchants satisfied, the rich melancholic, and the populace content.
Madame De Stael
#28. O Earth! all bathed with blood and years, yet never / Hast thou ceased putting forth thy fruit and flowers.
Madame De Stael
#30. Wit consists in knowing the resemblance of things that differ, and the difference of things that are alike.
Madame De Stael
#32. We understand death for the first time when he puts his hand upon one whom we love
Madame De Stael
#33. Sow good services: sweet remembrances will grow from them.
Madame De Stael
#34. The language of religion can alone suit every situation and every mode of feeling.
Madame De Stael
#35. The world is the work of a single thought, expressed in a thousand different ways.
Madame De Stael
#36. The success of any man with any woman is apt to displease even his best friends.
Madame De Stael
#37. Kindness and generosity ... form the true morality of human actions.
Madame De Stael
#38. Genius inspires this thirst for fame: there is no blessing undesired by those to whom Heaven gave the means of winning it.
Madame De Stael
#39. Every time a new nation, America or Russia for instance, advances toward civilization, the human race perfects itself; every time an inferior class emerges from enslavement and degradation, the human race again perfects itself.
Madame De Stael
#40. The study of history, it seems to me, leads to the conviction that all important events tend toward the same end - the civilization of mankind.
Madame De Stael
#41. [Moralistic] novels are at the same disadvantage as teachers: children never believe them, because they make everything that happens relate to the lesson at hand.
Madame De Stael
#43. Liberty is the only idea which circulates with the human blood, in all ages, in all countries, and in all literature - liberty that is, and what cannot be separated from liberty, a love of country.
Madame De Stael
#44. A voyage without companionship, that is to say without conversation, is one of the saddest pleasures of life.
Madame De Stael
#45. I do not want an echo of myself from my children. I do not want to hear from them merely the reverberation of my own voice.
Madame De Stael
#46. In the history of the human mind there has never been a useful thought or a profound truth that has not found its century and admirers.
Madame De Stael
#47. When women oppose themselves to the projects and ambition of men, they excite their lively resentment; if in their youth they meddle with political intrigues, their modesty must suffer.
Madame De Stael
#50. The entire social order ... is arrayed against a woman who wants to rise to a man's reputation.
Madame De Stael
#51. Intellect is a sin that must be atoned for by leading exactly the life of those who have none.
Madame De Stael
#52. I am glad that I am not a man, for then I should have to marry a woman.
Madame De Stael
#53. Nothing is so horrifying as the possibility of existing simply because we do not know how to die.
Madame De Stael
#54. Happiness is a wondrous commodity: the more you give, the more you have.
Madame De Stael
#55. Love is above the laws, above the opinion of men; it is the truth, the flame, the pure element, the primary idea of the moral world.
Madame De Stael
#56. Men err from selfishness; women because they are weak.
Madame De Stael
#57. Nature, who permits no two leaves to be exactly alike, has given a still greater diversity to human minds. Imitation, then, is a double murder; for it deprives both copy and original of their primitive existence.
Madame De Stael
#59. Thought can never be compared with action, but when it awakens in us the image of truth.
Madame De Stael
#60. Courage of soul is necessary for the triumphs of genius.
Madame De Stael
#62. Life resembles Gobelin tapestry; you do not see the canvass on the right side; but when you turn it, the threads are visible.
Madame De Stael
#63. I believe that happiness consists in having a destiny in keeping with our abilities. Our desires are things of the moment, often harmful even to ourselves; but our abilities are permanent, and their demands never cease.
Madame De Stael
#64. The only equitable manner in my opinion, of judging the character of a man is to examine if there are personal calculations in his conduct; if there are not, we may blame his manner of judging, but we are not the less bound to esteem him.
Madame De Stael
#65. What is love, if it can calculate and provide against its own decay?
Madame De Stael
#66. The life of famous men was more glorious in antiquity; the life of obscure men is happier with the moderns.
Madame De Stael
#67. The people are as severe toward the clergy as toward women; they want to see absolute devotion to duty from both.
Madame De Stael
#68. In women's destiny everything goes downhill except for thought, whose immortal nature it is to keep constantly rising.
Madame De Stael
#69. That past which is so presumptuously brought forward as a precedent for the present, was itself founded on some past that went before it.
Madame De Stael
#70. Unhappy love freezes all our affections: our own souls grow inexplicable to us. More than we gained while we were happy we lose by the reverse.
Madame De Stael
#71. I never was able to believe in the existence of next year except as in a metaphysical notion.
Madame De Stael
#72. Gaiety pleases more when we are assured that it does not cover carelessness.
Madame De Stael
#73. Women have no existence except in love; the history of their life begins and ends with love!
Madame De Stael
#74. A Gothic building engenders true religion ... The light, falling through colored glass, the singular forms of the architecture, unite to give a silent image of that infinite mystery which the soul for ever feels, and never comprehends.
Madame De Stael
#75. Have you not observed that faith is generally strongest in those whose character may be called the weakest?
Madame De Stael
#76. One must, so long as there is any life left, back up the character of one's life.
Madame De Stael
#77. Atheism exists only in coldness, selfishness, and baseness.
Madame De Stael
#78. Good taste cannot supply the place of genius in literature, for the best proof of taste, when there is no genius, would be, not to write at all.
Madame De Stael
#79. [On Napoleon:] One has the impression of an imperious wind blowing about one's ears when one is near that man.
Madame De Stael
#81. Scientific progress makes moral progress a necessity; for if man's power is increased, the checks that restrain him from abusing it must be strengthened.
Madame De Stael
#82. I must keep on rowing, not until I reach port but until I reach my grave.
Madame De Stael
#83. When once enthusiasm has been turned into ridicule, everything is undone except money and power.
Madame De Stael
#84. Prayer is more than meditation. In meditation, the source of strength is one's self. When one prays, he goes to a source of strength greater than his own.
Madame De Stael
#85. When at eve, at the bounding of the landscape, the heavens appear to recline so slowly on the earth, imagination pictures beyond the horizon an asylum of hope, - a native land of love; and nature seems silently to repeat that man is immortal.
Madame De Stael
#86. The more we know the better we forgive. Whoever feels deeply, feels for all who live.
Madame De Stael
#87. Innocence in genius, and candor in power, are both noble qualities.
Madame De Stael
#89. No nation has the right to bring about a revolution, even though such a change may be most urgently needed, if the price is the blood of one single innocent individual ...
Madame De Stael
#90. The most beautiful landscapes in the world, if they evoke no memory, if they bear no trace of a remarkable event, are uninteresting compared to historic landscapes.
Madame De Stael
#91. [To Bonaparte, when asked why she meddled in politics:] Sire, when women have their heads cut off, it is but just they should know the reason.
Madame De Stael
#92. If it were not for respect for human opinions, I would not open my window to see the Bay of Naples for the first time, whilst I would go five hundred leagues to talk with a man of genius whom I had not seen.
Madame De Stael
#93. One must, in one's life, make a choice between boredom and suffering.
Madame De Stael
#94. Men have made of fortune an all-powerful goddess, in order that she may be made responsible for all their blunder's.
Madame De Stael
#95. If one hour's work is enough to govern France, four minutes is all that is needed for Italy. There is no nation more easily frightened; even its poetic imagination predisposes it to fear, and they look upon power as on an image that fills them with terror.
Madame De Stael
#96. Why shouldn't man be as angry about not having always been alive as about having to stop being alive?
Madame De Stael
#97. Love is admiring with the heart. And admiring is loving with the mind.
Madame De Stael
#98. The face of a woman, whatever be the force or extent of her mind, whatever be the importance of the object she pursues, is always an obstacle or a reason in the story of her life.
Madame De Stael
#99. I desire no other proof of Christianity than the Lord's Prayer.
Madame De Stael
#100. Only the refined and delicate pleasures that spring from research and education can build up barriers between different ranks.
Madame De Stael
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