Madame De Stael Quotes

Goethe has made a remark upon the perfectability of the human mind, which is full of sagacity: It is always advancing, but in a spiral line.

Love is the symbol of eternity.

Enthusiasm signifies 'God in us.'

Prayer is the life of the soul.

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

As we grow in wisdom, we pardon more freely.

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

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

Search for the truth is the noblest occupation of man; its publication is a duty.

We cease loving ourselves if no one loves us.

The more I see of man, the more I like dogs.

Love is admiring with the heart. And admiring is loving with the mind.

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

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.

Who understands much forgives much. To understand everything makes us very forgiving.

Have you not observed that faith is generally strongest in those whose character may be called the weakest?

And all the bustle of departure - sometimes sad, sometimes intoxicating - just as fear or hope may be inspired by the new chances of coming destiny.

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.

However old a conjugal union, it still garners some sweetness. Winter has some cloudless days, and under the snow a few flowers still bloom.

How true it is that, sooner or later, the' most rebellious must bow beneath the yoke of misfortune!

Happiness is a wondrous commodity: the more you give, the more you have.

Men err from selfishness; women because they are weak.

The world is the work of a single thought, expressed in a thousand different ways.

Poetry is the apotheosis of sentiment.

When we destroy an old prejudice, we have need of a new virtue.

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.

Beauty is one in the universe, and, whatever form it assumes, it always arouses a religious feeling in the hearts of mankind.

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

Exile: A tomb in which you can get mail.

[On Italian:] One may almost call it a language that talks of itself, and always seems more witty than its speakers.

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

Thought can never be compared with action, but when it awakens in us the image of truth.

Music revives the recollections it would appease.

Be happy, but be happy through piety.

One must, in one's life, make a choice between boredom and suffering.

The mystery of existence is the connection between our faults and our misfortunes.

When once enthusiasm has been turned into ridicule, everything is undone except money and power.

Madame de Stael thought it was pride in mankind to endeavour to penetrate the secret of the universe; and speaking of the higher metaphysics she said: "I prefer the Lord's Prayer to it all."

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

Intellect does not attain its full force unless it attacks power.

That past which is so presumptuously brought forward as a precedent for the present, was itself founded on some past that went before it.

A religious life is a struggle and not a hymn.

Sow good services: sweet remembrances will grow from them.

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

Men have made of fortune an all-powerful goddess, in order that she may be made responsible for all their blunder's.

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

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

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

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

[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.