Quotes from Madame de Stael

Men do not change; they unmask themselves.

The life of famous men was more glorious in antiquity; the life of obscure men is happier with the moderns.

Love is above the laws, above the opinion of men; it is the truth, the flame, the pure element, the primary idea of the moral world.

Man's most valuable faculty is his imagination.

Ought not every woman, like every man, to follow the bent of her own talents?

[On Napoleon:] One has the impression of an imperious wind blowing about one's ears when one is near that man.

Why shouldn't man be as angry about not having always been alive as about having to stop being alive?

Glory can be for a woman but the brilliant morning of happiness.

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

Music revives the recollections it would appease.

The sight of such a monument is like continual and stationary music, which one hears for one's good as one approaches it.

Nothing recalls the past like music.

In women's destiny everything goes downhill except for thought, whose immortal nature it is to keep constantly rising.

Poetry is the apotheosis of sentiment.

Love, supreme power of the heart, mysterious enthusiasm that encloses in itself all poetry, all heroism, all religion!

We always cut our poetical theories to suit our talent.

in Italy, almost at every step, history and poetry add to the graces of nature, sweeten the memory of the past, and seem to preserve it in eternal youth.

Enthusiasm signifies 'God in us.'

The sense of this word among the Greeks affords the noblest definition of it; enthusiasm signifies 'God in us.'

Good taste cannot supply the place of genius in literature, for the best proof of taste, when there is no genius, would be, not to write at all.

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

Be happy, but be happy through piety.

The study of history, it seems to me, leads to the conviction that all important events tend toward the same end - the civilization of mankind.

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