Anne Louise Germaine de Stael (1766 – 1817)
Commonly known as Madame de Staël, was a French-speaking Swiss author living in Paris and abroad who determined literary tastes of Europe at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries.
Madame de Staël thought it was pride in man to endeavour to penetrate the secret of the universe; and speaking of the higher metaphysics she said: "I prefer the Lord's Prayer to it all."
Be happy, but be so by piety.
You do not reach the sublime by degrees; the distance between it and the merely beautiful is infinite.
Superstition attaches to this life, and religion to the next; superstition is allied to fatality, and religion to virtue; it is from the vivacity of earthly desires that we become superstitious, and it is, on the contrary, by the sacrifice of these same desires that we are religious.
Genius is essentially creative; it bears the stamp of the individual who possesses it.
Un homme doit savoir braver l'opinion; une femme s'y soumettre.
La recherche de la vérité est la plus noble des occupations, et sa publication un devoir.
Danger is like wine, it goes to your head.
Life often seems like a long shipwreck, of which the débris are friendship, fame, and love.
If we would succeed in works of the imagination, we must offer a mild morality in the midst of rigid manners; but where the manners are corrupt, we must consistently hold up to view an austere morality.
When once enthusiasm has been turned into ridicule, everything is undone except money and power.
The desire of the man is for the woman, but the desire of the woman is for the desire of the man.
One must, in one's life, make a choice between boredom and suffering.
Let us then blend everything: love, religion, genius, with sunshine, perfume, music, and poetry. Atheism exists only in coldness, selfishness and baseness.
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.
Sow good services: sweet remembrances will grow from them.
Innocence in genius, and candor in power, are both noble qualities.
Beauty is one in the universe, and, whatever form it assumes, it always arouses a religious feeling in the hearts of mankind.
Men do not change; they unmask themselves.
La vue d'un tel monument est comme une musique continuelle et fixée, qui vous attend pour vous faire du bien quand vous vous en approchez.