Madame de Stael Quotes

Love is the whole history of a woman's life, it is an episode in a man's.

Madame de Stael (De l'Influence des Passions, 1796)

We cease loving ourselves if no one loves us.

Madame de Stael (Quoted by Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve)

The education of life perfects the thinking mind, but depraves the frivolous.

Madame de Stael (Quoted by Edward Bulwer-Lytton)

Sow good services: sweet remembrances will grow from them.

Madame de Stael

To be totally understanding makes one very indulgent.

Madame de Stael (Corinne, 1807)

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

Madame de Stael

As we grow in wisdom, we pardon more freely.

Madame de Stael

A man must know how to fly in the face of opinion; a woman to submit to it.

Madame de Stael (Delphine - Epigraph, 1802)

O Earth! all bathed with blood and tears, yet never
Hast thou ceased putting forth thy fruit and flowers.

Madame de Stael (Corinne, 1807)

Men do not change; they unmask themselves.

Madame de Stael

Genius is essentially creative; it bears the stamp of the individual who possesses it.

Madame de Stael (Corinne, 1807)

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.

Madame de Stael (De l'Allemagne, 1813)

I learn life from the poets.

Madame de Stael

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

Madame de Stael

One must chose in life between boredom and suffering.

Madame de Stael

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

Madame de Stael

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

Madame de Stael (De l'Allemagne, 1813)

Frivolity, under whatever form it appears, deprives attention of its power, thought of its originality, and sentiment of its depth.

Madame de Stael (Corinne, 1807)

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

Madame 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.

Madame de Stael

When a noble life has prepared old age, it is not decline that it reveals, but the first days of immortality.

Madame de Stael

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

Madame de Stael

Love is the emblem of eternity; it confounds all notion of time; effaces all memory of a beginning, all fear of an end…

Madame de Stael (Corinne, 1807)

Madame de Stael Biography

Born: April 22, 1766
Died: July 14, 1817

Germaine de Staël or also known as Madame de Stael was a French-speaking Swiss author living in Paris. She is best known for her influence on 19th century literature.

Notable Works

Delphine (1802)
Corinne (1807)

Misattributed Quotes
The human mind always makes progress, but it is a progress in spirals.
  Goethe, this quote is probably a paraphrase of something Johann Wolfgang von Goethe wrote.