Top 140 Madame de Stael Quotes (2024 Update)
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101. “One must, so long as there is any life left, back up the character of one’s life.”

— Madame de Stael

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

— Madame de Stael

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

— Madame de Stael

104. “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.”

— Madame de Stael

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

— Madame de Stael

106. “Exile: A tomb in which you can get mail.”

— Madame de Stael

107. “The most careful reasoning characters are very often the most easily abashed.”

— Madame de Stael

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

— Madame de Stael

109. “When at eve, at the bounding of the landscape, the heavens appear to recline so slowly on the earth, imagination pictures beyond the horizon an asylum of hope, – a native land of love; and nature seems silently to repeat that man is immortal.”

— Madame de Stael

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

— Madame de Stael

111. “Prayer is the life of the soul.”

— Madame de Stael

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

— Madame de Stael

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

— Madame de Stael

114. “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.”

— Madame de Stael

115. “Tombs decked by the arts can scarcely represent death as a formidable enemy; we do not, indeed, like the ancients, carve sports and dances in the sarcophagus, but thought is diverted from the bier by works that tell of immortality, even from the altar of death.”

— Madame de Stael

116. “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.”

— Madame de Stael

117. “It is not enough to forgive; one must forget.”

— Madame de Stael

118. “The mind’s pleasures are made to calm the tempests of the heart.”

— Madame de Stael

119. “The soul is a fire that darts its rays through all the senses; it is in this fire that existence consists; all the observations and all the efforts of philosophers ought to turn towards this Me, the centre and moving power of our sentiments and our ideas.”

— Madame de Stael

120. “Life, for me, is living among my friends.”

— Madame de Stael

121. “The study of history, it seems to me, leads to the conviction that all important events tend toward the same end – the civilization of mankind.”

— Madame de Stael

122. “Man’s most valuable faculty is his imagination.”

— Madame de Stael

123. “A religious life is a struggle and not a hymn.”

— Madame de Stael

124. “Men err from selfishness; women because they are weak.”

— Madame de Stael

125. “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.”

— Madame de Stael

126. “The life of famous men was more glorious in antiquity; the life of obscure men is happier with the moderns.”

— Madame de Stael

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

— Madame de Stael

128. “To be totally understanding makes one very indulgent.”

— Madame de Stael

129. “Providence protects us in all the details of our lot.”

— Madame de Stael

130. “When women oppose themselves to the projects and ambition of men, they excite their lively resentment; if in their youth they meddle with political intrigues, their modesty must suffer.”

— Madame de Stael

131. “If we would succeed in works of the imagination, we must offer a mild morality in the midst of rigid manners; but where the manners are corrupt, we must consistently hold up to view an austere morality.”

— Madame de Stael

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

— Madame de Stael

133. “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.”

— Madame de Stael

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

— Madame de Stael

135. “Whatever is natural admits of variety.”

— Madame de Stael

136. “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.”

— Madame de Stael

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

— Madame de Stael

138. “I desire no other proof of Christianity than the Lord’s Prayer.”

— Madame de Stael

139. “What is love, if it can calculate and provide against its own decay?”

— Madame de Stael

140. “Courage of soul is necessary for the triumphs of genius.”

— Madame de Stael

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

— Madame de Stael

142. “To live beneath sorrow, one must yield to it.”

— Madame de Stael

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

— Madame de Stael

144. “The evil arising from mental improvement can be corrected only by a still further progress in that very improvement. Either morality is a fable, or the more enlightened we are, the more attached to it we become.”

— Madame de Stael

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

— Madame de Stael

146. “Good taste cannot supply the place of genius in literature, for the best proof of taste, when there is no genius, would be, not to write at all.”

— Madame de Stael

147. “Atheism exists only in coldness, selfishness, and baseness.”

— Madame de Stael