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
Love is the history of a woman's life; it is an episode in man's. [Fr., L'amour est l'histoire de la vie des femmes; c'est un episode dans celle des hommes.]
Men have made of fortune an all-powerful goddess, in order that she may be made responsible for all their blunder's.
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.
It is obvious that the most despotic forms of social organization would be suitable for inert men who are satisfied with the situation fate has placed them in, and that the most abstract form of democratic theory would be practicable among sages guided only by their reason. The only problem is to what degree it is possible to excite or to contain the passions without endangering public happiness.
Love is the whole history of a woman's life, it is but an episode in a man's.
Scientific progress makes moral progress a necessity; for if man's power is increased, the checks that restrain him from abusing it must be strengthened.
Truth and, by consequence, liberty, will always be the chief power of honest men.
Ought not every woman, like every man, to follow the bent of her own talents?
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.
I am glad that I am not a man, for then I should have to marry a woman.
The entire social order ... is arrayed against a woman who wants to rise to a man's reputation.
The success of any man with any woman is apt to displease even his best friends.
[On Napoleon:] One has the impression of an imperious wind blowing about one's ears when one is near that man.
Why shouldn't man be as angry about not having always been alive as about having to stop being alive?