Anne Louise Germaine de Staël-Holstein (1766–1817,) commonly known as Madame de Staël, was a French woman of letters of Genevan origin whose lifetime overlapped with the events of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic era. For many years she lived as an exile under the Reign of Terror and under Napoleonic persecution. Known as a witty and brilliant conversationalist, often dressed in flashy and revealing outfits, she participated actively in the political and intellectual life of her times. She was present at the first opening of the Estates General and at the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. Her intellectual collaboration with Benjamin Constant between 1795 and 1811 made them one of the most celebrated intellectual couples of their time. They discovered sooner than others the tyrannical character and designs of Napoleon. In 1814 one of her contemporaries observed that “there are three great powers struggling against Napoleon for the soul of Europe: England, Russia, and Madame de Staël”. Her works, both novels and travel literature, with emphasis on passion, individuality and oppositional politics made their mark on European Romanticism.
Source: Wikipedia (via CC-BY-SA license) • READ: Works by Anne Louise Germaine de Stael
Genius is essentially creative; it bears the stamp of the individual who possesses it.
—Anne Louise Germaine de Stael
Topics: Genius
Love, which is only an episode in the life of a man, is the entire history of woman’s life.
—Anne Louise Germaine de Stael
Topics: Love
When a noble life has prepared old age, it is not decline that it reveals, but the first days of immortality.
—Anne Louise Germaine de Stael
Topics: Age, Aging
There are only two distinct classes of people on this earth: those who espouse enthusiasm and those who despise it.
—Anne Louise Germaine de Stael
Life often seems like a long shipwreck of which the debris are friendship, glory, and love. — The shores of existence are strewn with them.
—Anne Louise Germaine de Stael
Topics: Life
Prayer is more than meditation. In meditation, the source of strength is one’s self. When one prays, he goes to a source of strength greater than his own.
—Anne Louise Germaine de Stael
Topics: Prayer
The mystery of existence is the connection between our faults and our misfortunes.
—Anne Louise Germaine de Stael
Topics: Difficulty, Existence
I desire no other evidence of the truth of Christianity, than the Lord’s prayer.
—Anne Louise Germaine de Stael
Topics: Prayer
As we grow in wisdom, we pardon more freely.
—Anne Louise Germaine de Stael
Topics: Wisdom
That past which is so presumptuously brought forward as a precedent for the present, was itself founded on some past that went before it.
—Anne Louise Germaine de Stael
Topics: Past, Progress, Reflection
The soul is a fire that darts its rays through all the senses; it is in this fire that existence consists; all the observations and all the efforts of philosophers ought to turn towards this ME, the centre and moving power of our sentiments and our ideas.
—Anne Louise Germaine de Stael
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