Anne Louise Germaine de Staël Quotes

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

Anne Louise Germaine de Staël
Self-love, so sensitive in its own cause, has rarely any sympathy to spare for others.

Anne Louise Germaine de Staël
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.

Anne Louise Germaine de Staël
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.

Anne Louise Germaine de Staël
Glory can be for a woman but the brilliant mourning of happiness.

Anne Louise Germaine de Staël
The search for the truth is the noblest of occupations, and its publication a duty.

Anne Louise Germaine de Staël
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.

Anne Louise Germaine de Staël
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.

Anne Louise Germaine de Staël
Enthusiasm, though the seed
Of every high heroic deed,
Each pious sacrifice — its lot
Is scorn, from those who feel it not.

Anne Louise Germaine de Staël
Love is the whole history of a woman's life; it is but an episode in a man's.

Anne Louise Germaine de Staël
Atheism exists only in coldness, selfishness, and baseness.

Anne Louise Germaine de Staël
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.

Anne Louise Germaine de Staël
The sight of such a building is like a ceaseless, changeless melody.

Anne Louise Germaine de Staël
A man must know how to defy opinion; a woman how to submit to it.

Anne Louise Germaine de Staël
The last steps of life are ever slow and difficult.

Anne Louise Germaine de Staël
Anything that happens gradually is always irrevocable.

Anne Louise Germaine de Staël
There are only two distinct classes of people on this earth, those who espouse enthusiasm and those who despise it.

Anne Louise Germaine de Staël
Ought not every woman, like every man, to follow the bent of her own talents?

Anne Louise Germaine de Staël
Anyone who can see as far as tomorrow in politics arouses the wrath of people who can see no farther than today.

Anne Louise Germaine de Staël
Intellect does not attain its full force unless it attacks power.

Anne Louise Germaine de Staël
Kindness and generosity... form the true morality of human actions.

Anne Louise Germaine de Staël
Men have made of Fortune an all-powerful goddess, in order to be made responsible for all their blunders.

Anne Louise Germaine de Staël
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.

Anne Louise Germaine de Staël
Who understands much forgives much. To understand everything makes us very forgiving.

Anne Louise Germaine de Staël
'I told you how it would be.' Strange mode of comforting; but such is the satisfaction which vanity tastes at the expense of misfortune.

Anne Louise Germaine de Staël
Life often seems but a long shipwreck, of which the debris are friendship, glory, and love: the shores of our existence are strewn with them.

Anne Louise Germaine de Staël
Understanding everything makes one very indulgent.

Anne Louise Germaine de Staël
In this genre, perfection may require the greatest genius, but mediocrity is well within everyone's grasp.

Anne Louise Germaine de Staël
The pleasures of thought are remedies for the wounds of the heart.

Anne Louise Germaine de Staël
One must, in one's life, make a choice between boredom and suffering.

Anne Louise Germaine de Staël