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
the last steps of life are ever slow and difficult.
I must keep on rowing, not until I reach port but until I reach my grave.
One must, so long as there is any life left, back up the character of one's life.
The entire social order ... is arrayed against a woman who wants to rise to a man's reputation.
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.
Life, for me, is living among my friends.
The success of any man with any woman is apt to displease even his best friends.
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.
[On Napoleon:] One has the impression of an imperious wind blowing about one's ears when one is near that man.
I never was able to believe in the existence of next year except as in a metaphysical notion.
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.
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.
The mind's pleasures are made to calm the tempests of the heart.
Self-love, so sensitive in its own cause, has rarely any sympathy to spare for others.