Madame de Stael Quotes
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What matters in a character is not whether one holds this or that opinion: what matters is how proudly one upholds it.
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Taste is to literature what bon ton is in society.
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The thing that must be preserved in all situations whatever is the reputation of one's character.
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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.
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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.
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One must, so long as there is any life left, back up the character of one's life.
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Atheism exists only in coldness, selfishness, and baseness.
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There is no reality on this earth except religion and the power of love; all the rest is even more fugitive than life itself.
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Only the refined and delicate pleasures that spring from research and education can build up barriers between different ranks.
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Self-love, so sensitive in its own cause, has rarely any sympathy to spare for others.
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Life resembles Gobelin tapestry; you do not see the canvass on the right side; but when you turn it, the threads are visible.
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Every time a new nation, America or Russia for instance, advances toward civilization, the human race perfects itself; every time an inferior class emerges from enslavement and degradation, the human race again perfects itself.
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Life, for me, is living among my friends.
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Anything that happens gradually is always irrevocable.
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Happy the land where the writers are sad, the merchants satisfied, the rich melancholic, and the populace content.
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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.
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Kindness and generosity ... form the true morality of human actions.
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I learn life from the poets.
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The greater part of what women write about women is mere sycophancy to man.
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[On Napoleon:] One has the impression of an imperious wind blowing about one's ears when one is near that man.
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The world is the work of a single thought, expressed in a thousand different ways.
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Men err from selfishness; women because they are weak.
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Love is the symbol of eternity.
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Ought not every woman, like every man, to follow the bent of her own talents?
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The egotism of woman is always for two.
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Man's most valuable faculty is his imagination.
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We always cut our poetical theories to suit our talent.
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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.
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[Moralistic] novels are at the same disadvantage as teachers: children never believe them, because they make everything that happens relate to the lesson at hand.
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[On Russia:] In every way, there is something gigantic about this people: ordinary dimensions have no applications whatever to it. I do not mean by this that true greatness and stability are never met with; but their boldness, their imaginativeness knows no bounds. With them everything is colossal rather than well-proportioned, audacious rather than well-considered, and if they do not attain their goals, it is because they exceed them.
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