Superstition is related to this life, religion to the next; superstition is allied to fatality, religion to virtue; it is by the vivacity of earthly desires that we become superstitious; it is, on the contrary, by the sacrifice of these desires that we become religious.

— Madame de Stael

Madame de Stael Quotes

Poetry is the apotheosis of sentiment.

— Madame de Stael

Providence protects us in all the details of our lot.

— Madame de Stael

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.

— Madame de Stael

Taste is to literature what bon ton is in society.

— Madame de Stael

Intellect does not attain its full force unless it attacks power.

— Madame de Stael

Mystery such as is given of God is beyond the power of human penetration, yet not in opposition to it.

— Madame de Stael

A religious life is a struggle and not a hymn.

— Madame de Stael

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

— Madame de Stael

Innocence in genius, and candor in power, are both noble qualities.

— 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.

— Madame de Stael

Men do not change, they unmask themselves.

— Madame de Stael

The greater part of what women write about women is mere sycophancy to man.

— Madame de Stael

Only the refined and delicate pleasures that spring from research and education can build up barriers between different ranks.

— Madame de Stael

The egotism of woman is always for two.

— Madame de Stael

Gaiety pleases more when we are assured that it does not cover carelessness.

— Madame de Stael

Genius inspires this thirst for fame: there is no blessing undesired by those to whom Heaven gave the means of winning it.

— Madame de Stael

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

— Madame de Stael

When women oppose themselves to the projects and ambition of men, they excite their lively resentment; if in their youth they meddle with political intrigues, their modesty must suffer.

— Madame de Stael

Tombs decked by the arts can scarcely represent death as a formidable enemy; we do not, indeed, like the ancients, carve sports and dances in the sarcophagus, but thought is diverted from the bier by works that tell of immortality, even from the altar of death.

— Madame de Stael

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.

— Madame de Stael
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