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
Genius inspires this thirst for fame: there is no blessing undesired by those to whom Heaven gave the means of winning it.
The more we know the better we forgive. Whoever feels deeply, feels for all who live.
You do not reach the sublime by degrees; the distance between it and the merely beautiful is infinite.
Poetry is the apotheosis of sentiment.
Providence protects us in all the details of our lot.
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.
Exile: A tomb in which you can get mail.
[The Germans] so easily confuse obstinacy with energy, and rudeness with firmness.
There are only two distinct classes of people on this earth, those who espouse enthusiasm and those who despise it.
There is no second country for an Englishman, except a ship and the sea.
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.
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.
nothing is so horrifying as the possibility of existing simply because we do not know how to die.
a perfect piece of architecture kindles that aimless reverie, which bears the soul we know not whither.