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[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

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Madame de Stael
Age: 51 †
Born: 1766
Born: April 22
Died: 1817
Died: July 14
Correspondent
Diarist
Literary Critic
Politician
Salonnière
Writer
Paris
France
Madame de Staël
Madame Anne-Louise-Germaine de Staël
Anne-Louise-Germaine Necker
Mme de Staël
Anne-Louise-Germaine de Staël
Anne-Louise-Germaine
Mme de Staël-Holstein
Baroness de Staël-Holstein Anne-Louise-Germaine Necker
Anne-Louise Germaine Necker
Germaine de Staël-Holstein
Anne Louise Germaine de Stael-Holstein
Hope
Ridicule
Feelings
Vice
True
Soil
Thought
Vices
Stills
Reach
Soils
Still
Youth
Shameless
Believe
Laughing
Earnestness
Life
Serious
Laughs

More quotes by Madame de Stael

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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.
Madame de Stael
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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
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inventiveness is childish, practice sublime.
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The success of any man with any woman is apt to displease even his best friends.
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Glory can be for a woman but the brilliant morning of happiness.
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[The Germans] so easily confuse obstinacy with energy, and rudeness with firmness.
Madame de Stael
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What matters in a character is not whether one holds this or that opinion: what matters is how proudly one upholds it.
Madame de Stael
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The face of a woman, whatever be the force or extent of her mind, whatever be the importance of the object she pursues, is always an obstacle or a reason in the story of her life.
Madame de Stael
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The education of life perfects the thinking mind, but depraves the frivolous.
Madame de Stael
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You do not reach the sublime by degrees the distance between it and the merely beautiful is infinite.
Madame de Stael
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Self-love, so sensitive in its own cause, has rarely any sympathy to spare for others.
Madame de Stael
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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
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Love is the history of a woman's life it is an episode in man's. [Fr., L'amour est l'histoire de la vie des femmes c'est un episode dans celle des hommes.]
Madame de Stael
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As we grow in wisdom, we pardon more freely.
Madame de Stael
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We understand death for the first time when he puts his hand upon one whom we love
Madame de Stael
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I must keep on rowing, not until I reach port but until I reach my grave.
Madame de Stael
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I believe that happiness consists in having a destiny in keeping with our abilities. Our desires are things of the moment, often harmful even to ourselves but our abilities are permanent, and their demands never cease.
Madame de Stael
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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
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It is difficult to grow old gracefully.
Madame de Stael
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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