Top 100 Quotes About Madame De Stael
#1. Her imperturbable self-confidence (Duchesse de Maine) caused Madame de Stael to write that the Duchesse believed in herself the same way she believed in God, without explanation or discussion.
Antonia Fraser
#2. The feminine graces of Madame de Sevigne's genius are exquisitely charming; but the philosophy and eloquence of Madame de Stael are above the distinction of sex.
James Mackintosh
#4. The human mind always makes progress, but it is a progress in spirals.
Madame De Stael
#5. 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
#6. Love is a symbol of eternity. It wipes out all sense of time, destroying all memory of a beginning and all fear of an end.
Madame De Stael
#8. 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
#10. The voice of conscience is so delicate that it is easy to stifle it; but it is also so clear that it is impossible to mistake it.
Madame De Stael
#11. All music, even if its occasion be a gay one, renders us pensive.
Madame De Stael
#12. 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
#13. Purity of mind and conduct is the first glory of a woman.
Madame De Stael
#14. Morality must guide calculation, and calculation must guide politics.
Madame De Stael
#15. How much past there is in a life, however brief it be.
Madame De Stael
#16. One must choose in life between boredom and suffering.
Madame De Stael
#18. Let us then blend everything: love, religion, genius, with sunshine, perfume, music, and poetry.
Madame De Stael
#19. The greatest happiness is to transform one's feelings into action.
Madame De Stael
#20. 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
#21. 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
#22. 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
#24. Glory can be for a woman but the brilliant morning of happiness.
Madame De Stael
#25. There is not enough interest in life to spread over twenty-four hours when one can't sleep.
Madame De Stael
#26. 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
#27. The mind's pleasures are made to calm the tempests of the heart.
Madame De Stael
#28. There are only two distinct classes of people on this earth, those who espouse enthusiasm and those who despise it.
Madame De Stael
#29. Wit lies in recognizing the resemblance among things which differ and the difference between things which are alike.
Madame De Stael
#30. Enthusiasm gives life to what is invisible; and interest to what has no immediate action on our comfort in this world.
Madame De Stael
#31. You do not reach the sublime by degrees; the distance between it and the merely beautiful is infinite.
Madame De Stael
#33. When men do wrong, it is out of hardness; when women do wrong, it is out of weakness.
Madame De Stael
#36. When we destroy an old prejudice, we have need of a new virtue.
Madame De Stael
#38. Search for the truth is the noblest occupation of man; its publication is a duty.
Madame De Stael
#39. Mystery such as is given of God is beyond the power of human penetration, yet not in opposition to it.
Madame De Stael
#41. There is no second country for an Englishman, except a ship and the sea.
Madame De Stael
#42. [On Italian:] One may almost call it a language that talks of itself, and always seems more witty than its speakers.
Madame De Stael
#43. How true it is that, sooner or later, the' most rebellious must bow beneath the yoke of misfortune!
Madame De Stael
#44. Love, supreme power of the heart, mysterious enthusiasm that encloses in itself all poetry, all heroism, all religion!
Madame De Stael
#45. Happy the land where the writers are sad, the merchants satisfied, the rich melancholic, and the populace content.
Madame De Stael
#46. O Earth! all bathed with blood and years, yet never / Hast thou ceased putting forth thy fruit and flowers.
Madame De Stael
#48. Wit consists in knowing the resemblance of things that differ, and the difference of things that are alike.
Madame De Stael
#50. We understand death for the first time when he puts his hand upon one whom we love
Madame De Stael
#51. Sow good services: sweet remembrances will grow from them.
Madame De Stael
#52. The language of religion can alone suit every situation and every mode of feeling.
Madame De Stael
#53. The world is the work of a single thought, expressed in a thousand different ways.
Madame De Stael
#54. The success of any man with any woman is apt to displease even his best friends.
Madame De Stael
#55. Kindness and generosity ... form the true morality of human actions.
Madame De Stael
#56. 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
#57. 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
#58. 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
#59. It seems to me that we become more dear one to the other, in together admiring works of art, which speak to the soul by their true grandeur.
Madame De Stael
#60. [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
#61. Tombs decked by the arts can scarcely represent death as a formidable enemy; we do not, indeed, like the ancients, carve sports and dances in the sarcophagus, but thought is diverted from the bier by works that tell of immortality, even from the altar of death.
Madame De Stael
#63. Genius is essentially creative; it bears the stamp of the individual who possesses it.
Madame De Stael
#65. 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
#66. A voyage without companionship, that is to say without conversation, is one of the saddest pleasures of life.
Madame De Stael
#67. 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
#68. Beauty is one in the universe, and, whatever form it assumes, it always arouses a religious feeling in the hearts of mankind.
Madame De Stael
#69. 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
#70. Frivolity, under whatever form it appears, deprives attention of its power, thought of its originality, and sentiment of its depth.
Madame De Stael
#71. 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
#72. We always cut our poetical theories to suit our talent ...
Madame De Stael
#73. Love which is only an episode in the life of men, is the entire history of the life of women.
Madame De Stael
#74. Truth and, by consequence, liberty, will always be the chief power of honest men.
Madame De Stael
#76. Between God and love, I recognize no mediator but my conscience ...
Madame De Stael
#78. The entire social order ... is arrayed against a woman who wants to rise to a man's reputation.
Madame De Stael
#79. Intellect is a sin that must be atoned for by leading exactly the life of those who have none.
Madame De Stael
#80. I am glad that I am not a man, for then I should have to marry a woman.
Madame De Stael
#81. [Ridicule] laughs at all those who see the earnestness of life and who still believe in true feelings and in serious thought ... It soils the hope of youth. Only shameless vice is above its reach.
Madame De Stael
#82. Nothing is so horrifying as the possibility of existing simply because we do not know how to die.
Madame De Stael
#83. Happiness is a wondrous commodity: the more you give, the more you have.
Madame De Stael
#84. Love is the whole history of a woman's life, it is but an episode in a man's.
Madame De Stael
#85. The sense of this word among the Greeks affords the noblest definition of it; enthusiasm signifies God in us.
Madame De Stael
#86. The pursuit of politics is religion, morality, and poetry all in one.
Madame De Stael
#87. 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
#88. Men err from selfishness; women because they are weak.
Madame De Stael
#89. 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
#91. Anything that happens gradually is always irrevocable.
Madame De Stael
#92. Conscience is doubtless sufficient to conduct the coldest character into the road of virtue; but enthusiasm is to conscience what honor is to duty; there is in us a superfluity of soul, which it is sweet to consecrate to the beautiful when the good has been accomplished.
Madame De Stael
#93. Self-love, so sensitive in its own cause, has rarely any sympathy to spare for others.
Madame De Stael
#94. Thought can never be compared with action, but when it awakens in us the image of truth.
Madame De Stael
#95. Courage of soul is necessary for the triumphs of genius.
Madame De Stael
#97. 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
#98. 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
#99. 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
#100. What is love, if it can calculate and provide against its own decay?
Madame De Stael
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