Madame de Stael Quotes

When a noble life has prepared old age, it is not decline that it reveals, but the first days of immortality.

The greater part of what women write about women is mere sycophancy to man.

Providence protects us in all the details of our lot.

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

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.

The sight of such a monument is like continual and stationary music, which one hears for one's good as one approaches it.

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

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.

Never, never have I been loved as I love others!

Poetry is the apotheosis of sentiment.

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.

The desire of the man is for the woman, but the desire of the woman is for the desire of the man.

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

the last steps of life are ever slow and difficult.

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

Life resembles Gobelin tapestry; you do not see the canvass on the right side; but when you turn it, the threads are visible.

The greatest happiness is to transform one's feelings into action.

The universe is in France; outside it, there is nothing.

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.

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

The more we know the better we forgive. Whoever feels deeply, feels for all who live.

Wit lies in recognizing the resemblance among things which differ and the difference between things which are alike.

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

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.

Love is the emblem of eternity; it confounds all notion of time.

Venice astonishes more than it pleases at first sight.

There is no reality on this earth except religion and the power of love; all the rest is even more fugitive than life itself.

The memories which come to us through music are not accompanied by any regrets; for a moment music gives us back the pleasures it retraces, and we feel them again rather than recollect them.

The thing that must be preserved in all situations whatever is the reputation of one's character.

The mind may be exhausted, but the language of the heart is inexhaustible.

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

We understand death only after it has placed its hands on someone we love.

Men err from selfishness; women because they are weak.

Conversation as talent exists only in France. In other countries, conversation provides politeness, discussion, and friendship; in France, it is an art for which imagination and soul are certainly very welcome, but which can also provide its own secret remedies to compensate you for the absence of either or both, if you so desire.

There are only two distinct classes of people on this earth, those who espouse enthusiasm and those who despise it.

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

The education of life perfects the thinking mind, but depraves the frivolous.

Life often seems like a long shipwreck of which the debris are friendship, glory, and love. - The shores of existence are strewn with them.

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?

We always cut our poetical theories to suit our talent.

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

I must keep on rowing, not until I reach port but until I reach my grave.

The language of religion can alone suit every situation and every mode of feeling.

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

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.

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.

In matters of the heart, nothing is true except the improbable.

Genius is essentially creative; it bears the stamp of the individual who possesses it.