Madame de Staël > Quotes

“Those who danced were thought to be quite insane by those who could not hear the music.”
― Anne Louise Germaine Staël-Holstein

“Politeness is the art of choosing among your thoughts.”
― Madame de Stael

“One must chose in life between boredom and suffering.”
― Madame De Stael

“Love is the emblem of eternity: it confounds all notion of time: effaces all memory of a beginning, all fear of an end.”
― Madame De Stal

“We understand death for the first time when he puts his hand upon one whom we love”
― Madame De Stael

“Love is the whole history of a woman's life, it is but an episode in a man's”
― Madame de Stael, De l'influence des passions sur le bonheur des individus et des nations

“Life seems like a long shipwreck, of which the debris are friendship, glory, and love; the shores of existence are strewn with them.”
― Anne-Louise-Germaine de Staël

“The desire of the man is for the woman, but the desire of the woman is for the desire of the man.”
― Madame de Staël

“Men do not change. They unmask themselves.”
― Madame de Stael

“Wit consists in knowing the resemblance of things that differ and the difference of things that are alike.”
― Germaine De Stael

“We live in an age when selfinterest alone seems to determine all of man’s acts—and what empathy, what emotion, what enthusiasm can ever grow out of self interest. It is pleasanter to dream of those times of dedication, sacrifice, and heroism that used to be, and that have left honorable traces upon the earth.”
― Anne-Louise-Germaine de Staël, Corinne, or Italy

“Intellect does not attain its full force unless it attacks power.”
― Madame de Stael

“Nothing is less applicable to life than a mathematical argument. A proposition expressed in numbers is definitely false or true. In all other relations, the truth is so mingled with the false that often only instinct can help us to decide among virtuous influences, sometimes equally as strong in one direction as in the other.”
― Anne-Louise-Germaine de Staël, De l'Allemagne, tome 1

“The human mind is always making progress, but it is a progress in spirals.”
― Anne-Louise-Germaine de Staël

“Sow good services, sweet rememberances will grow from them.”
― Madame De Stael

“A wellborn soul is guided by only one principle in the world: always do good to others and never harm”
― Anne-Louise-Germaine de Staël, Delphine

“Genius has no sex”
― Germaine de Stael

“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.”
― Anne Louise Germaine de Staël-Holstein

“I learn life from the poets.”
― Anne Louise Germaine de Staël

“Morality and freedom are as certainly the only bases of the happiness and dignity of the human race as the system of Galileo is the true theory of the celestial motions.”
― Anne-Louise-Germaine de Staël, Considerations on the Principal Events of the French Revolution

“Those who do not want to be judged by what they say may very well not deserve our interest in what they think.”
― Germaine de Staël, De l'Allemagne, tome 1

“Virtue . . . is nearly connected with the heart: I have called it Beneficence; not in the very limited sense that is generally given to the term, but to specify thereby all the actions that emanate from active goodness.”
― Anne-Louise-Germaine de Staël, De l'influence des passions sur le bonheur des individus et des nations

“Enlightening, teaching, and perfecting women together with men on the national and individual level: this must be the secret for the achievement of every reasonable goal, as well as the establishment of any permanent social or political relationships.”
― Anne-Louise-Germaine de Staël, De la littérature: PRESENTATION PAR GERARD GENGEMBRE ET JEAN GOLDZINK

“We cease loving ourselves if no one loves us.”
― Madame de Stael, Ten Years of Exile

“The human mind always makes progress, but it is a progress made in spirals.”
― Madame de Stael

“When we accustom ourselves to see animals suffer, we in time overcome the natural repugnancy of the sense of anguish, we become less accessible to pity even for our·fellow creatures, or at least we feel no longer those involuntary impressions.”
― Anne-Louise-Germaine de Staël, De la littérature: PRESENTATION PAR GERARD GENGEMBRE ET JEAN GOLDZINK

“Sensibility, imagination, reason, each is subservient to the other. Every one of these faculties would be nothing but a disease, but weakness, instead of strength, if it were not modified or completed by the collective character of our nature.”
― Anne-Louise-Germaine de Staël, De l'Allemagne, tome 2

“Women are the only human beings outside the realm of political interest and the career of ambition, able to pour scorn on base actions, point out ingratitude, and honor even disgrace if that disgrace is caused by noble
sentiments.”
― Germaine de Staël

“The more we know the better we forgive. Whoever feels deeply, feels for all who live.”
― Madame de Staël

“... the reciprocal obligation from man to man holds the first rank; what regards ourselves, ought to be considered relatively to the influence that we may possess over the destiny of others...”
― Anne-Louise-Germaine de Staël, De la littérature: PRESENTATION PAR GERARD GENGEMBRE ET JEAN GOLDZINK