Madame de Staël, Anne Louise Germaine de Staël-Holstein, born Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Madame Necker

When once enthusiasm has been turned into ridicule, everything is undone except money and power.

When we accustom ourselves to see animals suffer, we in time overcome the natural repugnancy of the sense of anguish, we become less accessible to pity even for our fellow creatures, or at least we feel no longer those involuntary impressions.

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.

Where no interest is taken in science, literature and liberal pursuits, mere facts and insignificant criticisms necessarily become the themes of discourse; and minds, strangers alike to activity and meditation, become so limited as to render all intercourse with them at once tasteless and oppressive.

Where we really love, we often dread more than we desire the solemn moment that exchanges hope for certainty.

Who understands much, forgives much.

Wit consists in knowing the resemblance of things that differ and the difference of things that are alike.

Wit consists in knowing the resemblance of things which differ and the difference of things which are alike.

Virtue . . . is nearly connected with the heart: I have called it Beneficence; not in the very limited sense that is generally given to the term, but to specify thereby all the actions that emanate from active goodness.

We live in an age when self-interest alone seems to determine all of man?s acts?and what empathy, what emotion, what enthusiasm can ever grow out of self-interest. It is pleasanter to dream of those times of dedication, sacrifice, and heroism that used to be, and that have left honorable traces upon the earth.

We understand death for the first time when he puts his hand upon one whom we love.

Whatever is natural admits of variety.

When a noble life has prepared old age, it is not the decline that it reveals, but the first days of immortality. 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.

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.

Purity of mind and conduct is the first glory of a woman.

The mystery of existence is the connection between our faults and our misfortunes.

Sensibility, imagination, reason, each is subservient to the other. Every one of these faculties would be nothing but a disease, but weakness, instead of strength, if it were not modified or completed by the collective character of our nature.

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

Society develops wit, but its contemplation alone forms genius.

The reciprocal obligation from man to man holds the first rank; what regards ourselves, ought to be considered relatively to the influence that we may possess over the destiny of others...

Sow good services: sweet remembrances will grow from them.

The sight of such a monument is like continual and stationary music which one hears for one's good as one approaches it.

Speech happens to not be his language

There are women vain of advantages not connected with their persons, such as birth, rank, and fortune; it is difficult to feel less the dignity of the sex. The origin of all women may be called celestial, for their power is the offspring of the gifts of Nature; by yielding to pride and ambition they soon destroy the magic of their charms.

Strangers are contemporary posterity.