Madame de Stael Men Quotations

Men err from selfishness; women because they are weak.

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

Scientific progress makes moral progress a necessity; for if man's power is increased, the checks that restrain him from abusing it must be strengthened.

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

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

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.]

Men have made of fortune an all-powerful goddess, in order that she may be made responsible for all their blunder's.

The only equitable manner in my opinion, of judging the character of a man is to examine if there are personal calculations in his conduct; if there are not, we may blame his manner of judging, but we are not the less bound to esteem him.

It is obvious that the most despotic forms of social organization would be suitable for inert men who are satisfied with the situation fate has placed them in, and that the most abstract form of democratic theory would be practicable among sages guided only by their reason. The only problem is to what degree it is possible to excite or to contain the passions without endangering public happiness.

Truth and, by consequence, liberty, will always be the chief power of honest men.

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

When at eve, at the bounding of the landscape, the heavens appear to recline so slowly on the earth, imagination pictures beyond the horizon an asylum of hope, - a native land of love; and nature seems silently to repeat that man is immortal.

I am glad that I am not a man, for then I should have to marry a woman.

The entire social order ... is arrayed against a woman who wants to rise to a man's reputation.

The success of any man with any woman is apt to displease even his best friends.

[On Napoleon:] One has the impression of an imperious wind blowing about one's ears when one is near that man.

Why shouldn't man be as angry about not having always been alive as about having to stop being alive?

Love which is only an episode in the life of men, is the entire history of the life of women.

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.

Men do not change, they unmask themselves.

Man's most valuable faculty is his imagination.

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

If it were not for respect for human opinions, I would not open my window to see the Bay of Naples for the first time, whilst I would go five hundred leagues to talk with a man of genius whom I had not seen.

When women oppose themselves to the projects and ambition of men, they excite their lively resentment; if in their youth they meddle with political intrigues, their modesty must suffer.

To pray together, in whatever tongue or ritual, is the most tender brotherhood of hope and sympathy that man can contract in this life.

The life of famous men was more glorious in antiquity; the life of obscure men is happier with the moderns.

The more I see of man, the more I like dogs.