Madame de Stael quotes:

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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.
A religious life is a struggle and not a hymn.
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.
Politeness is the art of choosing among your thoughts.
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.
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.
Wit consists in knowing the resemblance of things that differ, and the difference of things that are alike.
Sow good services: sweet remembrances will grow from them.
In matters of the heart, nothing is true except the improbable.
Love is the history of a woman's life; it is an episode in man's. [Fr., L'amour est l'histoire de la vie des femmes; c'est un episode dans celle des hommes.]
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.
Innocence in genius, and candor in power, are both noble qualities.
When men do wrong, it is out of hardness; when women do wrong, it is out of weakness.
The sense of this word among the Greeks affords the noblest definition of it; enthusiasm signifies God in us.
One must choose in life between boredom and suffering.
Love is the whole history of a woman's life, it is but an episode in a man's.
The only equitable manner in my opinion, of judging the character of a man is to examine if there are personal calculations in his conduct; if there are not, we may blame his manner of judging, but we are not the less bound to esteem him.
Atheism exists only in coldness, selfishness, and baseness.
A Gothic building engenders true religion ... The light, falling through colored glass, the singular forms of the architecture, unite to give a silent image of that infinite mystery which the soul for ever feels, and never comprehends.
Poetry is the apotheosis of sentiment.
There is no reality on this earth except religion and the power of love; all the rest is even more fugitive than life itself.
Enthusiasm gives life to what is invisible; and interest to what has no immediate action on our comfort in this world.
When a noble life has prepared old age, it is not decline that it reveals, but the first days of immortality.
Enthusiasm signifies God in us.
O memory, thou bitter sweet,--both a joy and a scourge!
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.
However old a conjugal union, it still garners some sweetness. Winter has some cloudless days, and under the snow a few flowers still bloom.
The desire of the man is for the woman, but the desire of the woman is for the desire of the man.
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.
Conversation as talent exists only in France. In other countries, conversation provides politeness, discussion, and friendship; in France, it is an art for which imagination and soul are certainly very welcome, but which can also provide its own secret remedies to compensate you for the absence of either or both, if you so desire.
inventiveness is childish, practice sublime.
Life teaches much, but to all thinking persons it brings ever closer the will of God - not because their faculties decline, but on the contrary, because they increase.
Search for the truth is the noblest occupation of man; its publication is a duty.
We cease loving ourselves if no one loves us.
As we grow in wisdom, we pardon more freely.
All music, even if its occasion be a gay one, renders us pensive.
That past which is so presumptuously brought forward as a precedent for the present, was itself founded on some past that went before it.
... in the history of the human mind there has never been a useful thought or a profound truth that has not found its century and admirers.
Providence protects us in all the details of our lot.
Wit lies in recognizing the resemblance among things which differ and the difference between things which are alike.
I do not want an echo of myself from my children. I do not want to hear from them merely the reverberation of my own voice.
To pray together, in whatever tongue or ritual, is the most tender brotherhood of hope and sympathy that man can contract in this life.
One must chose in life between boredom and suffering
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.
[Ridicule] laughs at all those who see the earnestness of life and who still believe in true feelings and in serious thought ... It soils the hope of youth. Only shameless vice is above its reach.
The human mind always makes progress, but it is a progress in spirals.
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.
How true it is that, sooner or later, the' most rebellious must bow beneath the yoke of misfortune!
When a noble life has prepared for old age, it is not decline that it reveals, but the first days of immortality.
To be totally understanding makes one very indulgent.
Men err from selfishness; women because they are weak.
The greatest happiness is to transform one's feelings into action.
[Moralistic] novels are at the same disadvantage as teachers: children never believe them, because they make everything that happens relate to the lesson at hand.
[On Italian:] One may almost call it a language that talks of itself, and always seems more witty than its speakers.
[On Napoleon:] One has the impression of an imperious wind blowing about one's ears when one is near that man.
[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.
[The Germans] so easily confuse obstinacy with energy, and rudeness with firmness.
[To Bonaparte, when asked why she meddled in politics:] Sire, when women have their heads cut off, it is but just they should know the reason.
A man must know how to fly in the face of opinion; a woman to submit to it.
a perfect piece of architecture kindles that aimless reverie, which bears the soul we know not whither.
A voyage without companionship, that is to say without conversation, is one of the saddest pleasures of life.
Anything that happens gradually is always irrevocable.
Be happy, but be happy through piety.
Beauty is one in the universe, and, whatever form it assumes, it always arouses a religious feeling in the hearts of mankind.
Between God and love, I recognize no mediator but my conscience ...
Conscience is doubtless sufficient to conduct the coldest character into the road of virtue; but enthusiasm is to conscience what honor is to duty; there is in us a superfluity of soul, which it is sweet to consecrate to the beautiful when the good has been accomplished.
Courage of soul is necessary for the triumphs of genius.
Danger is like wine, it goes to your head.
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?
Every time a new nation, America or Russia for instance, advances toward civilization, the human race perfects itself; every time an inferior class emerges from enslavement and degradation, the human race again perfects itself.
Exile: A tomb in which you can get mail.
Frivolity, under whatever form it appears, deprives attention of its power, thought of its originality, and sentiment of its depth.
Genius inspires this thirst for fame: there is no blessing undesired by those to whom Heaven gave the means of winning it.
Glory can be for a woman but the brilliant morning of happiness.
Happiness is a wondrous commodity: the more you give, the more you have.
Happy the land where the writers are sad, the merchants satisfied, the rich melancholic, and the populace content.
Have you not observed that faith is generally strongest in those whose character may be called the weakest?
How much past there is in a life, however brief it be.
I am glad that I am not a man, for then I should have to marry a woman.
I believe that happiness consists in having a destiny in keeping with our abilities. Our desires are things of the moment, often harmful even to ourselves; but our abilities are permanent, and their demands never cease.
I desire no other proof of Christianity than the Lord's Prayer.
I learn life from the poets.
I must keep on rowing, not until I reach port but until I reach my grave.
I never was able to believe in the existence of next year except as in a metaphysical notion.
If it were not for respect for human opinions, I would not open my window to see the Bay of Naples for the first time, whilst I would go five hundred leagues to talk with a man of genius whom I had not seen.
If one hour's work is enough to govern France, four minutes is all that is needed for Italy. There is no nation more easily frightened; even its poetic imagination predisposes it to fear, and they look upon power as on an image that fills them with terror.
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.
In women's destiny everything goes downhill except for thought, whose immortal nature it is to keep constantly rising.
Intellect does not attain its full force unless it attacks power.
intellect is a sin that must be atoned for by leading exactly the life of those who have none.
It is difficult to grow old gracefully.
It is not enough to forgive; one must forget.
It is obvious that the most despotic forms of social organization would be suitable for inert men who are satisfied with the situation fate has placed them in, and that the most abstract form of democratic theory would be practicable among sages guided only by their reason. The only problem is to what degree it is possible to excite or to contain the passions without endangering public happiness.
It seems to me that life's circumstances, being ephemeral, teach us less about durable truths than the fictions based on those truths; and that the best lessons of delicacy and self-respect are to be found in novels where the feelings are so naturally portrayed that you fancy you are witnessing real life as you read.
It seems to me that we become more dear one to the other, in together admiring works of art, which speak to the soul by their true grandeur.
Kindness and generosity ... form the true morality of human actions.
Let us then blend everything: love, religion, genius, with sunshine, perfume, music, and poetry.
Liberty is the only idea which circulates with the human blood, in all ages, in all countries, and in all literature - liberty that is, and what cannot be separated from liberty, a love of country.
Life resembles Gobelin tapestry; you do not see the canvass on the right side; but when you turn it, the threads are visible.
Life, for me, is living among my friends.
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.
Love is the emblem of eternity; it confounds all notion of time.
Love is the symbol of eternity.
Love which is only an episode in the life of men, is the entire history of the life of women.
Love, supreme power of the heart, mysterious enthusiasm that encloses in itself all poetry, all heroism, all religion!
Madame de StaÃ«l thought it was pride in mankind 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.
Man's most valuable faculty is his imagination.
Men have made of fortune an all-powerful goddess, in order that she may be made responsible for all their blunder's.
Morality must guide calculation, and calculation must guide politics.
Music revives the recollections it would appease.
Mystery such as is given of God is beyond the power of human penetration, yet not in opposition to it.
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.
Never, never have I been loved as I love others!
New doctrines ever displease the old. They like to fancy that the world has been losing wisdom, instead of gaining it, since they were young.
No nation has the right to bring about a revolution, even though such a change may be most urgently needed, if the price is the blood of one single innocent individual ...
nothing is so horrifying as the possibility of existing simply because we do not know how to die.
nothing recalls the past like music ...
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.
One must, in one's life, make a choice between boredom and suffering.
One must, so long as there is any life left, back up the character of one's life.

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