Madame de Stael
Madame de Stael
Anne Louise Germaine de Staël-Holstein, commonly known as Madame de Staël, was a French woman of letters of Swiss origin whose lifetime overlapped with the events of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic era. She was one of Napoleon's principal opponents. Celebrated for her conversational eloquence, she participated actively in the political and intellectual life of her times. Her works, both critical and fictional, made their mark on the history of European Romanticism...
NationalityFrench
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth22 April 1766
CountryFrance
Intellect does not attain its full force unless it attacks power.
Society develops wit, but its contemplation alone forms genius.
One must, in one's life, make a choice between boredom and suffering.
The greater part of what women write about women is mere sycophancy to man.
Where no interest is takes in science, literature and liberal pursuits, mere facts and insignificant criticisms necessarily become the themes of discourse; and minds, strangers alike to activity and meditation, become so limited as to render all intercourse with them at once tasteless and oppressive.
Wit lies in the likeness of things that are different, and in the difference of things that are alike.
Man's most valuable faculty is his imagination.
Gaiety pleases more when we are assured that it does not cover carelessness.
When men do wrong, it is out of hardness; when women do wrong, it is out of weakness.
Let us then blend everything: love, religion, genius, with sunshine, perfume, music, and poetry.
Atheism exists only in coldness, selfishness, and baseness.
Danger is like wine, it goes to your head.
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.
It is difficult to grow old gracefully.