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Of all human sentiments, enthusiasm creates the most happiness; it is the only sentiment in fact which gives real happiness, the only sentiment which can help us to bear our human destiny in any situation in which we may find ourselves.
Madame de Stael -
A voyage without companionship, that is to say without conversation, is one of the saddest pleasures of life.
Madame de Stael
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Liberty is the only idea which circulates with the human blood, in all ages, in all countries, and in all literature - liberty that is, and what cannot be separated from liberty, a love of country.
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 -
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.
Madame de Stael -
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.
Madame de Stael -
Happy the land where the writers are sad, the merchants satisfied, the rich melancholic, and the populace content.
Madame de Stael -
Life often seems like a long shipwreck of which the debris are friendship, glory, and love. - The shores of existence are strewn with them.
Madame de Stael
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Mystery such as is given of God is beyond the power of human penetration, yet not in opposition to it.
Madame de Stael -
The evil arising from mental improvement can be corrected only by a still further progress in that very improvement. Either morality is a fable, or the more enlightened we are, the more attached to it we become.
Madame de Stael -
Divine Wisdom, intending to detain us some time on earth, has done well to cover with a veil the prospect of the life to come; for if our sight could clearly distinguish the opposite bank, who would remain on this tempestuous coast of time?
Madame de Stael -
If one hour's work is enough to govern France, four minutes is all that is needed for Italy. There is no nation more easily frightened; even its poetic imagination predisposes it to fear, and they look upon power as on an image that fills them with terror.
Madame de Stael -
It seems to me that life's circumstances, being ephemeral, teach us less about durable truths than the fictions based on those truths; and that the best lessons of delicacy and self-respect are to be found in novels where the feelings are so naturally portrayed that you fancy you are witnessing real life as you read.
Madame de Stael -
Conscience is doubtless sufficient to conduct the coldest character into the road of virtue; but enthusiasm is to conscience what honor is to duty; there is in us a superfluity of soul, which it is sweet to consecrate to the beautiful when the good has been accomplished.
Madame de Stael
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O Earth! All bathed with blood and tears, yet never, Hast thou ceased putting forth thy fruit and flowers.
Madame de Stael -
Why shouldn't man be as angry about not having always been alive as about having to stop being alive?
Madame de Stael -
Every time a new nation, America or Russia for instance, advances toward civilization, the human race perfects itself; every time an inferior class emerges from enslavement and degradation, the human race again perfects itself.
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 -
You do not reach the sublime by degrees; the distance between it and the merely beautiful is infinite.
Madame de Stael -
Frivolity, under whatever form it appears, deprives attention of its power, thought of its originality, and sentiment of its depth.
Madame de Stael
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If we would succeed in works of the imagination, we must offer a mild morality in the midst of rigid manners; but where the manners are corrupt, we must consistently hold up to view an austere morality.
Madame de Stael -
Goethe has made a remark upon the perfectability of the human mind, which is full of sagacity: It is always advancing, but in a spiral line.
Madame de Stael -
However old a conjugal union, it still garners some sweetness. Winter has some cloudless days, and under the snow a few flowers still bloom.
Madame de Stael -
[Ridicule] laughs at all those who see the earnestness of life and who still believe in true feelings and in serious thought ... It soils the hope of youth. Only shameless vice is above its reach.
Madame de Stael