Top 140 Madame de Stael Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “The greatest happiness is to transform one’s feelings into action.”

— Madame de Stael

Featured in: Happiness Quotes, Action Quotes, Quotes About Feelings

2. “One must choose in life between boredom and suffering.”

— Madame de Stael

3. “We understand death for the first time when he puts his hand upon one whom we love.”

— Madame de Stael

4. “Enthusiasm signifies God in us.”

— Madame de Stael

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

— Madame de Stael

6. “Politeness is the art of choosing among your thoughts.”

— Madame de Stael

7. “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.”

— Madame de Stael

8. “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.”

— Madame de Stael

9. “The desire of the man is for the woman, but the desire of the woman is for the desire of the man.”

— Madame de Stael

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

— Madame de Stael

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

— Madame de Stael

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

— Madame de Stael

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

— Madame de Stael

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

— Madame de Stael

15. “Who understands much, forgives much.”

— Madame de Stael

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

— Madame de Stael

17. “All music, even if its occasion be a gay one, renders us pensive.”

— Madame de Stael

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

— Madame de Stael

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

— Madame de Stael

20. “Society develops wit, but its contemplation alone forms genius.”

— Madame de Stael

21. “Love is the whole history of a woman’s life, it is but an episode in a man’s.”

— Madame de Stael

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

— Madame de Stael

23. “Taste is to literature what bon ton is in society.”

— Madame de Stael

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

— Madame de Stael

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

— Madame de Stael

26. “As we grow in wisdom, we pardon more freely.”

— Madame de Stael

27. “The egotism of woman is always for two.”

— Madame de Stael

28. “Anything that happens gradually is always irrevocable.”

— Madame de Stael

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

— Madame de Stael

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

— Madame de Stael

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

— Madame de Stael

32. “I believe that happiness consists in having a destiny in keeping with our abilities. Our desires are things of the moment, often harmful even to ourselves; but our abilities are permanent, and their demands never cease.”

— Madame de Stael

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

— Madame de Stael

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

— Madame de Stael

35. “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.”

— Madame de Stael

36. “I learn life from the poets.”

— Madame de Stael

37. “Superstition is related to this life, religion to the next; superstition is allied to fatality, religion to virtue; it is by the vivacity of earthly desires that we become superstitious; it is, on the contrary, by the sacrifice of these desires that we become religious.”

— Madame de Stael

38. “Music revives the recollections it would appease.”

— Madame de Stael

39. “Of all human sentiments, enthusiasm creates the most happiness; it is the only sentiment in fact which gives real happiness, the only sentiment which can help us to bear our human destiny in any situation in which we may find ourselves.”

— Madame de Stael

40. “Love is admiring with the heart. And admiring is loving with the mind.”

— Madame de Stael

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

— Madame de Stael

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

— Madame de Stael

43. “Men do not change, they unmask themselves.”

— Madame de Stael

44. “O memory, thou bitter sweet, – both a joy and a scourge!”

— Madame de Stael

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

— Madame de Stael

46. “We cease loving ourselves if no one loves us.”

— Madame de Stael

47. “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.”

— Madame de Stael

48. “Never, never have I been loved as I love others!”

— Madame de Stael

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

— Madame de Stael

50. “Sow good services: sweet remembrances will grow from them.”

— Madame de Stael