Top 140 Madame de Stael Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “Speech happens to not be his language.”

— Madame de Stael

52. “Love is the symbol of eternity.”

— Madame de Stael

53. “The human mind always makes progress, but it is a progress in spirals.”

— Madame de Stael

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

— Madame de Stael

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

— Madame de Stael

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

— Madame de Stael

57. “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.”

— Madame de Stael

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

— Madame de Stael

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

— Madame de Stael

60. “The only equitable manner in my opinion, of judging the character of a man is to examine if there are personal calculations in his conduct; if there are not, we may blame his manner of judging, but we are not the less bound to esteem him.”

— Madame de Stael

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

— Madame de Stael

62. “Venice astonishes more than it pleases at first sight...”

— Madame de Stael

63. “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.”

— Madame de Stael

64. “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?”

— Madame de Stael

65. “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.”

— Madame de Stael

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

— Madame de Stael

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

— Madame de Stael

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

— Madame de Stael

69. “Poetry is the apotheosis of sentiment.”

— Madame de Stael

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

— Madame de Stael

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

— Madame de Stael

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

— Madame de Stael

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

— Madame de Stael

74. “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.”

— Madame de Stael

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

— Madame de Stael

76. “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...”

— Madame de Stael

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

— Madame de Stael

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

— Madame de Stael

79. “Conscience is doubtless sufficient to conduct the coldest character into the road of virtue; but enthusiasm is to conscience what honor is to duty; there is in us a superfluity of soul, which it is sweet to consecrate to the beautiful when the good has been accomplished.”

— Madame de Stael

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

— Madame de Stael

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

— Madame de Stael

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

— Madame de Stael

83. “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.”

— Madame de Stael

84. “The thing that must be preserved in all situations whatever is the reputation of one’s character.”

— Madame de Stael

85. “Frivolity, under whatever form it appears, deprives attention of its power, thought of its originality, and sentiment of its depth.”

— Madame de Stael

86. “Morality must guide calculation, and calculation must guide politics.”

— Madame de Stael

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

— Madame de Stael

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

— Madame de Stael

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

— Madame de Stael

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

— Madame de Stael

91. “It is difficult to grow old gracefully.”

— Madame de Stael

92. “Danger is like wine, it goes to your head.”

— Madame de Stael

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

— Madame de Stael

94. “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.”

— Madame de Stael

95. “Be happy, but be happy through piety.”

— Madame de Stael

96. “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.”

— Madame de Stael

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

— Madame de Stael

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

— Madame de Stael

99. “Why shouldn’t man be as angry about not having always been alive as about having to stop being alive?”

— Madame de Stael

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

— Madame de Stael