Madame De Stael Quotes

Self-love, so sensitive in its own cause, has rarely any sympathy to spare for others.

The egotism of woman is always for two.

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

intellect is a sin that must be atoned for by leading exactly the life of those who have none.

Life, for me, is living among my friends.

The entire social order ... is arrayed against a woman who wants to rise to a man's reputation.

Between God and love, I recognize no mediator but my conscience.

nothing is so horrifying as the possibility of existing simply because we do not know how to die.

Kindness and generosity ... form the true morality of human actions.

Unhappy love freezes all our affections: our own souls grow inexplicable to us. More than we gained while we were happy we lose by the reverse.

One must, so long as there is any life left, back up the character of one's life.

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.

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

Speech happens to not be his language.

[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.

Happy the land where the writers are sad, the merchants satisfied, the rich melancholic, and the populace content.

The most beautiful landscapes in the world, if they evoke no memory, if they bear no trace of a remarkable event, are uninteresting compared to historic landscapes.

[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.

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

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

there is not enough interest in life to spread over twenty-four hours when one can't sleep.

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

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.

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

Let us then blend everything: love, religion, genius, with sunshine, perfume, music, and poetry.

Danger is like wine, it goes to your head.

The pursuit of politics is religion, morality, and poetry all in one.

Man's most valuable faculty is his imagination.

... 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.

Gaiety pleases more when we are assured that it does not cover carelessness.

We always cut our poetical theories to suit our talent.

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 last steps of life are ever slow and difficult.

When men do wrong, it is out of hardness; when women do wrong, it is out of weakness.

Ought not every woman, like every man, to follow the bent of her own talents?

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.

The mind's pleasures are made to calm the tempests of the heart.

What matters in a character is not whether one holds this or that opinion: what matters is how proudly one upholds it.

[On Napoleon:] One has the impression of an imperious wind blowing about one's ears when one is near that man.

Why shouldn't man be as angry about not having always been alive as about having to stop being alive?

I never was able to believe in the existence of next year except as in a metaphysical notion.

a perfect piece of architecture kindles that aimless reverie, which bears the soul we know not whither.

No nation has the right to bring about a revolution, even though such a change may be most urgently needed, if the price is the blood of one single innocent individual.

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

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 face of a woman, whatever be the force or extent of her mind, whatever be the importance of the object she pursues, is always an obstacle or a reason in the story of her life.

inventiveness is childish, practice sublime.

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

There is no second country for an Englishman, except a ship and the sea.

You do not reach the sublime by degrees; the distance between it and the merely beautiful is infinite.