Madame De Stael Quotes

One must choose in life between boredom and suffering.

Innocence in genius, and candor in power, are both noble qualities.

Nothing recalls the past like music.

It is difficult to grow old gracefully.

I am glad that I am not a man, for then I should have to marry a woman.

Atheism exists only in coldness, selfishness, and baseness.

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.

Love, supreme power of the heart, mysterious enthusiasm that encloses in itself all poetry, all heroism, all religion!

Enthusiasm gives life to what is invisible; and interest to what has no immediate action on our comfort in this world.

O Earth! All bathed with blood and tears, yet never, Hast thou ceased putting forth thy fruit and flowers.

The people are as severe toward the clergy as toward women; they want to see absolute devotion to duty from both.

To pray together, in whatever tongue or ritual, is the most tender brotherhood of hope and sympathy that man can contract in this life.

Truth and, by consequence, liberty, will always be the chief power of honest men.

The sense of this word among the Greeks affords the noblest definition of it; enthusiasm signifies 'God in us.'

Love which is only an episode in the life of men, is the entire history of the life of women.

Mystery such as is given of God is beyond the power of human penetration, yet not in opposition to it.

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.

How much past there is in a life, however brief it be.

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.

A man must know how to fly in the face of opinion; a woman to submit to it.

Love is the history of a woman's life; it is an episode in man's. [Fr., L'amour est l'histoire de la vie des femmes; c'est un episode dans celle des hommes.]

To live beneath sorrow, one must yield to it.

Society develops wit, but its contemplation alone forms genius.

Venice astonishes more than it pleases at first sight.

Love is the whole history of a woman's life, it is but an episode in a man's.

Men do not change; they unmask themselves.

It is not enough to forgive; one must forget.

Who understands much, forgives much.

Morality must guide calculation, and calculation must guide politics.

Only the refined and delicate pleasures that spring from research and education can build up barriers between different ranks.

Anyone who can see as far as tomorrow in politics arouses the wrath of people who can see no farther than today.

Taste is to literature what bon ton is in society.

Whatever is natural admits of variety.

[The Germans] so easily confuse obstinacy with energy, and rudeness with firmness.

Providence protects us in all the details of our lot.

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.

Wit lies in the likeness of things that are different, and in the difference of things that are alike.

Anything that happens gradually is always irrevocable.

O memory, thou bitter sweet,--both a joy and a scourge!

In women's destiny everything goes downhill except for thought, whose immortal nature it is to keep constantly rising.

Strangers are contemporary posterity. [Fr., Les etrangers sont la posterite contemporaine.]

Glory can be for a woman but the brilliant morning of happiness.

Genius inspires this thirst for fame: there is no blessing undesired by those to whom Heaven gave the means of winning it.

Courage of soul is necessary for the triumphs of genius.

A voyage without companionship, that is to say without conversation, is one of the saddest pleasures of life.

The success of any man with any woman is apt to displease even his best friends.

To be totally understanding makes one very indulgent.

Purity of mind and conduct is the first glory of a woman.

Life teaches much, but to all thinking persons it brings ever closer the will of God - not because their faculties decline, but on the contrary, because they increase.

The life of famous men was more glorious in antiquity; the life of obscure men is happier with the moderns.