"What a man really says when he says that someone else can be persuaded by force, is that he himself is incapable of more rational means of communication."

"A library, to modify the famous metaphor of Socrates, should be the delivery room for the birth of ideas — a place where history comes to life."

"La religion n'est rien si elle n'est pas tout, si l'existence n'en est pas remplie."

"Feminist literary critics have shown how in the 19th century women writers began to acknowledge women as their muses and their role models... Elizabeth Barrett Browning admired the work of George Sand and Mme. de Staël, while her work, in its turn, was an inspiration to Emily Dickinson. Margaret Fuller and Sarah Orne Jewett acknowledged their indebtedness to Mme. de Staël, the author of Corinne... The list could be indefinitely extended to show the almost desperate search of writing women for authoritative female predecessors."

"Who talks from thought and reflection is rarely eloquent; Madame de Staël was the only exception I ever knew to that rule."

"Madame de Staël, daughter of M. Necker, is now at the head of the colony of French noblesse, established near Mickleham. She is one of the first women I have ever met with for abilities and extraordinary intellect."

"The human mind always makes progress, but it is a progress in spirals."

"The desire of the man is for the woman, but the desire of the woman is for the desire of the man."

"Le sens de ce mot, chez les Grecs, en est la plus noble définition: l'enthousiasme signifie Dieu en nous ."

"Ces règles ne sont que des barrières pour empêcher les enfants de tomber."

"La recherche de la vérité est la plus noble des occupations, et sa publication un devoir."

"L'admiration pour le beau se rapporte toujours à la Divinité."

"La voix de la conscience est si délicate, qu'il est facile d'étouffer; mais elle est si pure, qu'il est impossible de la méconnaître."

"L'esprit consiste à connaître la ressemblance des choses diverses et la différence des choses semblables."

"There is perhaps too much freedom in Protestantism to satisfy a certain religious austerity, which may seize upon the man who is overwhelmed by great misfortunes; sometimes even in the habitual course of life, the reality of this world disappears all at once, and we feel ourselves in the middle of its interests as we should at a ball, where we did not hear the music; the dancing that we saw there would appear insane."

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

"Be happy, but be so by piety."

"Tout comprendre rend très-indulgent."

"Ought not every woman, like every man, to follow the bent of her own talents?"

"O Earth! all bathed with blood and tears, yet never Hast thou ceased putting forth thy fruit and flowers."

"Danger is like wine, it goes to your head."

"A religious life is a struggle and not a hymn."

"Atheism exists only in coldness, selfishness, and baseness."

"Let us then blend everything: love, religion, genius, with sunshine, perfume, music, and poetry."

"Beauty is one in the universe, and, whatever form it assumes, it always arouses a religious feeling in the hearts of mankind."

"Love is the emblem of eternity; it confounds all notion of time; effaces all memory of a beginning, all fear of an end: we fancy that we have always possessed what we love, so difficult is it to imagine how we could have lived without it."

"Genius is essentially creative; it bears the stamp of the individual who possesses it."

"When men do wrong, it is out of hardness; when women do wrong, it is out of weakness."

"La vue d'un tel monument est comme une musique continuelle et fixée, qui vous attend pour vous faire du bien quand vous vous en approchez."

"You do not reach the sublime by degrees; the distance between it and the merely beautiful is infinite."

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

"Tout ce qui est naturel est varié."

"Frivolity, under whatever form it appears, deprives attention of its power, thought of its originality, and sentiment of its depth."

"Genius has no sex!"

"Men do not change; they unmask themselves."

"Sow good services: sweet remembrances will grow from them."

"Madame de Staël thought it was pride in mankind to endeavour to penetrate the secret of the universe; and speaking of the higher metaphysics she said: "I prefer the Lord's Prayer to it all.""

"You [America] are the vanguard of the human race. You are the world’s future."

"I must keep on rowing, not until I reach port but until I reach my grave."

"Life often seems like a long shipwreck, of which the débris are friendship, fame, and love."

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

"In matters of the heart, nothing is true except the improbable."

"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."

"Un homme doit savoir braver l'opinion; une femme s'y soumettre."

"One must, in one's life, make a choice between boredom and suffering."

"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."

"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."

"L'amour est l'histoire de la vie des femmes; c'est un épisode dans celle des hommes."

"On cesse de s'aimer si quelqu'un ne nous aime."