Anne Louise Germaine de Staël

Who was Anne Louise Germaine de Staël?

Anne Louise Germaine de Staël-Holstein, commonly known as Madame de Staël, was a French woman of letters of Swiss origin whose lifetime overlapped with the events of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic era. She was one of Napoleon's principal opponents. Celebrated for her conversational eloquence, she participated actively in the political and intellectual life of her times. Her works, both critical and fictional, made their mark on the history of European Romanticism.

Famous Quotes:

• The sense of this word among the Greeks affords the noblest definition of it; enthusiasm signifies God in us.
• Sow good services: sweet remembrances will grow from them.
• We cease loving ourselves if no one loves us.
• When a noble life has prepared old age, it is not decline that it reveals, but the first days of immortality.
• A man must know how to fly in the face of opinion; a woman to submit to it.
• The desire of the man is for the woman, but the desire of the woman is for the desire of the man.
• Wit lies in recognizing the resemblance among things which differ and the difference between things which are alike.
• The voice of conscience is so delicate that it is easy to stifle it; but it is also so clear that it is impossible to mistake it.
• Love is the emblem of eternity; it confounds all notion of time; effaces all memory of a beginning, all fear of an end.
• Genius is essentially creative; it bears the stamp of the individual who possesses it.