Anne Louise Germaine De Staël Quotes
April 22, 1766 – July 14, 1817
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Ought not every woman, like every man, to follow the bent of her own talents?
Anne Louise Germaine de Staël, Corinne (1807), Bk. XIV, ch. 1 
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More Anne Louise Germaine De Staël Quotes
Atheism exists only in coldness, selfishness, and baseness.
Anne Louise Germaine De Staël— Bk. 10, ch. 5
One must, in one's life, make a choice between boredom and suffering.
Anne Louise Germaine De Staël— Letter to Claude Hochet (Summer 1800), quoted in J. Christopher Herold, Mistress to an Age: A Life of Madame de Staël (New York: Grove Press, 1958), p. 223
— Herold comments: "Her decision was emphatically in favor of suffering, which after all was a pleasure compared to boredom." (p. 224)
In matters of the heart, nothing is true except the improbable.
Anne Louise Germaine De Staël— Letter to Juliette Récamier (October 5, 1810), quoted in J. Christopher Herold, Mistress to an Age: A Life of Madame de Staël (New York: Grove Press, 1958), p. 401
Life often seems like a long shipwreck, of which the débris are friendship, fame, and love.
Anne Louise Germaine De Staël— Reflections on Suicide (Réflexions sur le suicide, 1813), Section 1
Sow good services: sweet remembrances will grow from them.
Anne Louise Germaine De Staël— Quoted in A Thousand Flashes of French Wit, Wisdom, and Wickedness (1880) collected and translated by J. D. Finod, p. 138
Men do not change; they unmask themselves.
Anne Louise Germaine De Staël— Quoted in Invasion of the Party Snatchers : How the Holy-Rollers and the Neo-Cons Destroyed the GOP (2008) by Victor Gold
When once enthusiasm has been turned into ridicule, everything is undone except money and power.
Anne Louise Germaine De Staël— Bk. 4, ch. 3
You do not reach the sublime by degrees; the distance between it and the merely beautiful is infinite.
Anne Louise Germaine De Staël— Bk. 4, ch. 3
When men do wrong, it is out of hardness; when women do wrong, it is out of weakness.
Anne Louise Germaine De Staël— Bk. 6, ch. 3
Genius is essentially creative; it bears the stamp of the individual who possesses it.
Anne Louise Germaine De Staël— Bk. 7, ch. 1
Beauty is one in the universe, and, whatever form it assumes, it always arouses a religious feeling in the hearts of mankind.
Anne Louise Germaine De Staël— Bk. 8, ch. 2
Let us then blend everything: love, religion, genius, with sunshine, perfume, music, and poetry.
Anne Louise Germaine De Staël— Bk. 10, ch. 5
A religious life is a struggle and not a hymn.
Anne Louise Germaine De Staël— Bk. 10, ch. 5
Danger is like wine, it goes to your head.
Anne Louise Germaine De Staël— Bk. 12, ch. 2
Ought not every woman, like every man, to follow the bent of her own talents?
Anne Louise Germaine De Staël— Bk. 14, ch. 1
Be happy, but be so by piety.
Anne Louise Germaine De Staël— Bk. 20, ch. 3
Innocence in genius, and candor in power, are both noble qualities.
Anne Louise Germaine De Staël— Pt. 2, ch. 8
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.
Anne Louise Germaine De Staël— Pt. 3, ch. 13
Truth and, by consequence, liberty, will always be the chief power of honest men.
Anne Louise Germaine De Staël— Coppet et Weimar, Letter to General Moreau
When we destroy an old prejudice, we have need of a new virtue.
Anne Louise Germaine De Staël— Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 484.
A religious life is a struggle and not a hymn.
Anne Louise Germaine De Staël— Corinne (1807), Book X, Ch. V.
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.
Anne Louise Germaine De Staël— Reported in Abel Stevens' Life of Madame de Staël, Chapter XXXIV.
