Madame de Stael Quotes

Goethe has made a remark upon the perfectability of the human mind, which is full of sagacity: It is always advancing, but in a spiral line.

Love is the symbol of eternity.

Enthusiasm signifies 'God in us.'

Prayer is the life of the soul.

The greatest happiness is to transform one's feelings into action.

As we grow in wisdom, we pardon more freely.

In matters of the heart, nothing is true except the improbable.

Of all human sentiments, enthusiasm creates the most happiness; it is the only sentiment in fact which gives real happiness, the only sentiment which can help us to bear our human destiny in any situation in which we may find ourselves.

The desire of the man is for the woman, but the desire of the woman is for the desire of the man.

Search for the truth is the noblest occupation of man; its publication is a duty.

Love is admiring with the heart. And admiring is loving with the mind.

The more I see of man, the more I like dogs.

We cease loving ourselves if no one loves us.

We understand death for the first time when he puts his hand upon one whom we love

Who understands much forgives much. To understand everything makes us very forgiving.

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.

Life often seems like a long shipwreck of which the debris are friendship, glory, and love. - The shores of existence are strewn with them.

Have you not observed that faith is generally strongest in those whose character may be called the weakest?

And all the bustle of departure - sometimes sad, sometimes intoxicating - just as fear or hope may be inspired by the new chances of coming destiny.

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.

Love is a symbol of eternity. It wipes out all sense of time, destroying all memory of a beginning and all fear of an end.

How true it is that, sooner or later, the' most rebellious must bow beneath the yoke of misfortune!

However old a conjugal union, it still garners some sweetness. Winter has some cloudless days, and under the snow a few flowers still bloom.

Men err from selfishness; women because they are weak.

The world is the work of a single thought, expressed in a thousand different ways.

Happiness is a wondrous commodity: the more you give, the more you have.

Poetry is the apotheosis of sentiment.

Politeness is the art of choosing among your thoughts.

When we destroy an old prejudice, we have need of a new virtue.

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.

Beauty is one in the universe, and, whatever form it assumes, it always arouses a religious feeling in the hearts of mankind.

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.

[On Italian:] One may almost call it a language that talks of itself, and always seems more witty than its speakers.

[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.

Exile: A tomb in which you can get mail.

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.

We understand death only after it has placed its hands on someone we love.

Be happy, but be happy through piety.

The mystery of existence is the connection between our faults and our misfortunes.

Thought can never be compared with action, but when it awakens in us the image of truth.

Love is the emblem of eternity; it confounds all notion of time.

Music revives the recollections it would appease.

One must, in one's life, make a choice between boredom and suffering.

Sow good services: sweet remembrances will grow from them.

When once enthusiasm has been turned into ridicule, everything is undone except money and power.

The language of religion can alone suit every situation and every mode of feeling.

That past which is so presumptuously brought forward as a precedent for the present, was itself founded on some past that went before it.

The more we know the better we forgive. Whoever feels deeply, feels for all who live.

Men have made of fortune an all-powerful goddess, in order that she may be made responsible for all their blunder's.

Wit lies in recognizing the resemblance among things which differ and the difference between things which are alike.