Germaine de Staël Quotes

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.

A man must know how to fly in the face of opinion; a woman to submit to it.

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

The actual quotation is from a letter from Mme de Staël to Claude Hochet dated October 1, 1800: «Il faut choisir dans la vie entre l’ennui et le tourment : je donne l’un et l’hiver l’autre» (Germaine de Staël, Correspondance générale. Tome IV. Première partie. Du directoire au Consulat. 1er décembre 1796-15 décembre 1800, texte établi et présenté par Béatrice W. Jasinski, Paris, Chez Jean-Jacques Pauvert, 1976, xii/337 p., p. 326).

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 Influence of Literature upon Society (De la littérature considérée dans ses rapports avec les institutions sociales, 1800), Pt. 2, ch. 4

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.

Love is the whole history of a woman's life; it is an episode in a man's.

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

We cease loving ourselves if no one loves us.

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