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.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Anne Louise Germaine de Stael
A man must know how to fly in the face of opinion; a woman to submit to it.
—Anne Louise Germaine de Stael
Topics: Public opinion, Opinion
The voice of conscience is so delicate that it is easy to stifle it; but it is also so clear that it is impossible to mistake it.
—Anne Louise Germaine de Stael
Topics: Mistake, Conscience
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
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: Progress, Past, Reflection
The sense of this word among the Greeks affords the noblest definition of it; enthusiasm signifies “God in us.”
—Anne Louise Germaine de Stael
Topics: Enthusiasm
I desire no other evidence of the truth of Christianity, than the Lord’s prayer.
—Anne Louise Germaine de Stael
Topics: Prayer
Frivolity, under whatever form it appears, takes from attention its strength, from thought its originality, from feeling its earnestness.
—Anne Louise Germaine de Stael
The mystery of existence is the connection between our faults and our misfortunes.
—Anne Louise Germaine de Stael
Topics: Existence, Difficulty
The greatest happiness is to transform one’s feelings into action.
—Anne Louise Germaine de Stael
Topics: Feelings
To pray together, in whatever tongue or ritual, is the most tender brotherhood of hope and sympathy that man can contract in this life.
—Anne Louise Germaine de Stael
Topics: Prayer
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: Disappointment, Life
We cease loving ourselves if no one loves us.
—Anne Louise Germaine de Stael
Topics: Love
Speech happens to not be his language
—Anne Louise Germaine de Stael
Topics: Speech
Love is the emblem of eternity; it confounds all notion of time; effaces all memory of a beginning, all fear of an end.
—Anne Louise Germaine de Stael
Topics: Eternity, Love, Marriage
As we grow in wisdom, we pardon more freely.
—Anne Louise Germaine de Stael
Topics: Wisdom
Sow good services; sweet remembrances will grow from them.
—Anne Louise Germaine de Stael
Topics: Giving, Service, Kindness
When we destroy an old prejudice, we have need of a new virtue.
—Anne Louise Germaine de Stael
Topics: Prejudice
We understand death for the first time when he puts his hand upon one whom we love.
—Anne Louise Germaine de Stael
Topics: Death
Men err from selfishness; women because they are weak.
—Anne Louise Germaine de Stael
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: Woman, Love
Enthusiasm signifies God in us.
—Anne Louise Germaine de Stael
Topics: Enthusiasm, Passion
Search for the truth is the noblest occupation of man; its publication is a duty.
—Anne Louise Germaine de Stael
Topics: Truth
The more we know, the better we forgive.—Whoe’er feels deeply, feels for all that live.
—Anne Louise Germaine de Stael
Topics: Forgiveness
O, Memory, thou bitter-sweet—both a joy and a scourge.
—Anne Louise Germaine de Stael
Topics: Memory
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: Aging, Age
Innocence in genius, and candor in power, are both noble qualities.
—Anne Louise Germaine de Stael
Topics: Innocence
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
Divine wisdom, intending to detain us some time on earth, has done well to cover with a veil the prospect of the life to come; for if our sight could clearly distinguish the opposite bank, who would remain on this tempestuous coast of time?
—Anne Louise Germaine de Stael
One must choose in life between boredom and suffering.
—Anne Louise Germaine de Stael
Topics: Boredom, Religion
Genius is essentially creative; it bears the stamp of the individual who possesses it.
—Anne Louise Germaine de Stael
Topics: Genius
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