216 Quotes by Madame de Stael

That past which is so presumptuously brought forward as a precedent for the present, was itself founded on some past that went before it.

Love which is only an episode in the life of men, is the entire history of the life of women.

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

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.

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

Morality must guide calculation, and calculation must guide politics.

Love is the emplem of eternity; it confounds all notions of time; effaces all memory of begining, all fear of an end.

What matters in a character is not whether one holds this or that opinion: what matters is how proudly one upholds it.

[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.