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
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
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, Disappointment
The greatest happiness is to transform one’s feelings into action.
—Anne Louise Germaine de Stael
Topics: Feelings
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: Love, Eternity, Marriage
O, Memory, thou bitter-sweet—both a joy and a scourge.
—Anne Louise Germaine de Stael
Topics: Memory
Wit lies in recognizing the resemblance among things which differ and the difference between things which are alike.
—Anne Louise Germaine de Stael
Topics: Wit, Humor
We understand death for the first time when he puts his hand upon one whom we love.
—Anne Louise Germaine de Stael
Topics: Death
Search for the truth is the noblest occupation of man; its publication is a duty.
—Anne Louise Germaine de Stael
Topics: Truth
Frivolity, under whatever form it appears, takes from attention its strength, from thought its originality, from feeling its earnestness.
—Anne Louise Germaine de Stael
Speech happens to not be his language
—Anne Louise Germaine de Stael
Topics: Speech
Enthusiasm signifies God in us.
—Anne Louise Germaine de Stael
Topics: Passion, Enthusiasm
As we grow in wisdom, we pardon more freely.
—Anne Louise Germaine de Stael
Topics: Wisdom
We cease loving ourselves if no one loves us.
—Anne Louise Germaine de Stael
Topics: Love
The mystery of existence is the connection between our faults and our misfortunes.
—Anne Louise Germaine de Stael
Topics: Difficulty, Existence
I do not believe in ghosts, but i am awfully afraid of them.
—Anne Louise Germaine de Stael
I desire no other evidence of the truth of Christianity, than the Lord’s prayer.
—Anne Louise Germaine de Stael
Topics: Prayer
When we destroy an old prejudice, we have need of a new virtue.
—Anne Louise Germaine de Stael
Topics: Prejudice
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
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
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
A man must know how to fly in the face of opinion; a woman to submit to it.
—Anne Louise Germaine de Stael
Topics: Opinion, Public opinion
Sow good services; sweet remembrances will grow from them.
—Anne Louise Germaine de Stael
Topics: Giving, Service, Kindness
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
Innocence in genius, and candor in power, are both noble qualities.
—Anne Louise Germaine de Stael
Topics: Innocence
The more I see of men, the more I like dogs.
—Anne Louise Germaine de Stael
Topics: Men
The greater part of what women write about women is mere sycophancy to man.
—Anne Louise Germaine de Stael
Topics: Woman
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
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: Reflection, Past, Progress
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
The more we know, the better we forgive.—Whoe’er feels deeply, feels for all that live.
—Anne Louise Germaine de Stael
Topics: Forgiveness
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