"Stael" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... friends for us; they are more potent than eloquence or genius without them." They add to beauty, they detract from personal ugliness, they cast a glamour over defects, in short, they work the miracle of mind over matter exemplified in the case of the extremely plain Madame de Stael, who was reputed to "talk herself beautiful in ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... left us such charming memoirs, under the name of Madame de Stael, "do you believe in my prophecies now, ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... literature. If you fail, you will be sneered down till you become embittered, soured, misanthropic; a curse to yourself, a burden to the friends who sympathize with your blasted hopes. Edna, you have talent, you write well, you are conscientious; but you are not De Stael, or Hannah More, or Charlotte Bronte, or Elizabeth Browning; and I shudder when I think of the disappointment that may overtake all your eager aspirations. If I could be always near you, I should indulge less apprehension for your future; for I believe that I ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... dignified affability which was the distinctive characteristic of his manner under all circumstances; and although there was nothing in the occasion to justify it, I could not help recalling Madame de Stael's comment upon his appearance at Versailles, on the fearful fifth of October:—"M. de la Fayette was perfectly calm; nobody ever saw him otherwise." Withdrawing with them into an inner room, he did his ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... impression produced by the grand facade, we are more and more struck with the subtile art displayed in its adaptations and symbolisms. Never did any structure we have looked upon so fully justify Madame de Stael's definition of architecture, as "frozen music." The outermost towers, their pillars and domes, are all square, their outlines thus passing without too sudden transitions from the sharp square angles of the vaulted ceiling and the rectangular ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... last matrimonial observation has not been to advise all men of superiority to seek for women of superiority and we do not wish each one to expound our principles after the manner of Madame de Stael, who attempted in the most indelicate manner to effect a union between herself and Napoleon. These two beings would have been very unhappy in their domestic life; and Josephine was a wife accomplished in a very different sense from this virago ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... happiness."[146] Mademoiselle Curchod a few years later married Necker, a rich Paris banker, who under Louis XVI held the office of director-general of the finances. She was the mother of Madame de Stael, was a leader of the literary society in Paris and, despite the troublous times, must have led a happy life. One delightful aspect of the story is the warm friendship that existed between Madame ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... IV., Geneva honored as if her own son. Voltaire so loved Geneva that there he had a residence as well as at Ferney, and sang with enthusiasm of blue Lake Leman, "Mon lac est le premier." Madame de Stael was born of Swiss parents in Paris, but her childhood and many of her mature years were spent in charming Coppet, where the waters of the lake lave the shores within the boundary of the Canton of Geneva. Sismondi ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... at length exclaimed, "Valgame Dios! who is that girl?" Afterwards he was constantly with her, and more captivated, it is said, by her wit than by her beauty, considering her a sort of western Madame de Stael; all which leads me to suspect that the grave traveller was considerably under the influence of her fascinations, and that neither mines nor mountains, geography nor geology, petrified shells nor alpenkalkstein, ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... affirmative."—Maunder cor. "Slates are thin plates of stone, and are often used to cover the roofs of houses."—Webster cor. "Every man of taste, and of an elevated mind, ought to feel almost the necessity of apologizing for the power he possesses."—Translator of De Stael cor. "They very seldom trouble themselves with inquiries, or make any useful observations of their ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... the ascendant. In such a situation the man holds to the wife very much the position of a child to a teacher when the latter cannot or will not recognize that the mind he has ruled in childhood is becoming mature. Like Madame de Stael, who exclaimed in a room full of people, addressing, as we may say, a greater man than herself, "Do you know you have really said something very profound!" Madame Rabourdin said of her husband: "He certainly has a good deal of sense at times." Her disparaging opinion of him gradually appeared ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... Napoleon's life reduced to silence the lives of his contemporaries. He asserts that in the future, Bolvar will take his place beside the French Emperor. Napoleon owes his glory to Chateaubriand, to Lamartine, to Madame de Stael, to Byron, to Victor Hugo, while Bolvar has had few biographers, and a very few have spoken of him with the power and authority of those who praised or ...
— Simon Bolivar, the Liberator • Guillermo A. Sherwell
... enthusiastic and encyclopaedic book on Madame de Stael she quotes approvingly Sainte-Beuve's phrase that "with Corinne Madame de Stael ascended the Capitol." I forget in which of his many dealings with an author who, as he remarks in the "Coppet-and-Weimar" causeries, was "an idol of his youth and one that he never ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... should make a point of spending two hours a day in conversation with women, from whom there was much to be learnt. He had, no doubt, several types of women in mind, but it is more than probable that the banishment of Madame de Stael rose before him as one of the mistakes in his career. It was not that he showed lack of judgment merely by the persecution of a rare talent, but by failing to see that the rare talent was pointing out truths very valuable to his own safety. This is what happened ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... Madam de Stael said very justly to an Englishman, "Dans vos routes le corps fait plus de frai que l'esprit." But even if there are persons of a constitution robust enough to talk, they dare not do so, when twenty heads are forced into ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... sentiment born of the genius of the nation, and made an impression that was only gradually effaced. Marmontel, La Harpe, Marie-Joseph Chenier, and Chateaubriand, in his 'Essai sur Shakespeare,' 1801, inclined to Voltaire's view; but Madame de Stael wrote effectively on the other side in her 'De la Litterature, 1804 (i. caps. 13, 14, ii. 5.) 'At this day,' wrote Wordsworth in 1815, 'the French critics have abated nothing of their aversion to "this darling of our nation." "The English with their bouffon ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... the French papers: you gave them the taste for interesting themselves in the concerns of foreign countries. Few of us before steam had shortened distance really knew England. Voltaire had by turns glorified and ridiculed it; De Stael had shown it to us in an agreeable book; the witty letters of Duvergier de Hauranne had revealed the secrets of its electoral system. Your correspondence of 1841 completed the work." He might pertinently have added, "Because you are about ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... Buck reminded her excitedly. "Great Scott! With a grandmother who has made the T. A. Buck Featherloom Petticoat a household word, and a mother who was the cleverest woman advertising copy-writer in New York, this young lady ought to be a composite Hetty Green, Madame de Stael, Hypatia, and Emma McChesney Buck. She'll be a lady ...
— Emma McChesney & Co. • Edna Ferber
... of which Chateaubriand and Madame de Stael were the harbingers, owed its existence to a longing for a greater fulness of thought, a greater intenseness of feeling, a greater appropriateness and adequateness of expression, and, above all, a greater truth to life and nature. It was felt ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... time, and often has an odd, old-fashioned flavor suggestive of Marivaux and Crebillon fils. On the other hand, his psychologic tendency is distinctly modern, and not at all to the taste of an age which found Chateaubriand or Madame de Stael eminently satisfactory. But he appeals strongly to the speculating, self-questioning spirit of the present day, and Zola and Bourget in turn have been glad ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... to the meaning? The writer, like Pluto, "long puzzled his brain" to find it out, till he was immersed "in a lower deep" by hearing Madame de Stael say, at the table of the late Lord Dillon, "Buonaparte is not a man, but a system." Inquiry was made in the course of the evening of Sir James Mackintosh as to what the lady meant? He answered, "Mass! I cannot tell." Madame de Stael ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... Madame de Stael has truly observed, that love occupies the whole life of a woman. It is not therefore surprising that women should be more skilful in detecting the symptoms of it in others. Mrs McElvina, with the usual penetration of her sex, discovered what ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... not a man, but a system,' once said, in her most impressive tones, Madame de Stael to Sir James Mackintosh, across a dinner-table. 'Magnificent!' murmured Sir James. 'But what does she mean?' whispered one of those helplessly commonplace creatures who, like the present writer, go about spoiling everything. 'Mass! I cannot tell!' was the frank acknowledgment and apt Shakspearian ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... most is to see the odd way in which books get together, especially in the library of a man who reads his books and puts them up again wherever there is room. Now here is a charming party: "A Treatise on the Steam-Engine" between "Locke on Christianity" and Madame de Stael's "Corinne." I wonder what they talk about at night when we are all asleep. Here is another happy juxtaposition: old Clarendon next to a modern metaphysician whom he would positively loathe. Here is Sadler next to Malthus, and Horsley ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps
... Benjamin Constant, whose book on the Hundred Days was just about to appear. Lucien scarcely caught a glimpse of fair hair, a refined oval-shaped face, keen eyes, and the pleasant-looking mouth belonging to the man who had played the part of a Potemkin to Mme. de Stael for twenty years, and now was at war with the Bourbons, as he had been at war with Napoleon. He was destined to win his cause and to die stricken to earth by ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... recover. He was saved for the last time; but this epoch was marked by an event so agonizing to his heart that he immediately called it mortal. Indeed, he did not long survive the rupture of his friendship with Madame Sand, which took place at this date. Madame de Stael, who, in spite of her generous and impassioned heart, her subtle and vivid intellect, fell sometimes into the fault of making her sentences heavy through a species of pedantry which robbed them of the grace of "abandon,"—remarked ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... ruins of public liberty, he would have instantly repelled the unjust insinuation. Yet Greece fell; Caesar passed the Rubicon, and the patriotic arm even of Brutus could not preserve the liberties of his devoted country! The celebrated Madame de Stael, in her last and perhaps her best work, has said, that in the very year, almost the very month, when the president of the Directory declared that monarchy would never more show its frightful head in France, Bonaparte, with his grenadiers, entered the palace of St. ...
— Henry Clay's Remarks in House and Senate • Henry Clay
... Madame de Stael's words show much insight when she says that only the people who can play with children are able to educate them. For success in training children the first condition is to become as a child oneself, but ...
— The Education of the Child • Ellen Key
... public questions and events that they for the most part involuntarily became mere political partisans. Among others, but with a considerable modification on the score of the literary element, may be instanced Madame de Stael, who by descent, education, and natural bias was inevitably destined to aim at political power. The extent and prominence of that exercised by her must have been considerable, though certainly overrated by Napoleon, in whom, however, it excited such unreasonable ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... and letters he was brought into more or less intimate contact with Sir Humphry Davy, the Edgeworths, Sir James Mackintosh, Colman the dramatic author, the older Kean, Monk Lewis, Grattan, Curran, and Madame de Stael. Of a meeting of the last two he remarks, "It was like the confluence of the Rhone and the Saone, and they were both so ugly that I could not help wondering how the best intellects of France and Ireland could have taken up respectively ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... of Plato brought before my mind Arthur's reading, and the life with which he invested the words of these old-time philosophers that had so keen an interest for him; while Madame de Stael's "Allemagne," and my little copy of Ehlert's "Letters on Music" were associated with almost every hour of the day. They had lain upon my writing-table the entire summer, and it was my habit whenever I laid down my ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland
... was the Vienna described by Madame de Stael in 1810: 'Dans ce pays, l'on traite les plaisirs comme les devoirs. . . . Vous verrez des hommes et des femmes executer gravement, l'un vis-a-vis de l'autre, les pas d'un menuet dont ils sont impose l'amusement, . . . comme ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... brilliant women in former times, notably Madame de Stael, or Margaret Fuller, have enjoyed the attentions and apparent devotion of men for many years without having entered into any more intimate relationship with them. But these examples have been few in the past, and have been much commented upon. In the ...
— Sex=The Unknown Quantity - The Spiritual Function of Sex • Ali Nomad
... afterwards Sir John Salusbury Life in Wales Character and Habits of Piozzi Brynbella Illness and Death of Piozzi Miss Thrale's Marriage The Conway Episode Anecdotes Celebration of her Eightieth Birthday Her Death and Will Madame D'Arblay's Parallel between Mrs. Piozzi and Madame de Stael Character of Mrs. ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... Mitford went to the fetes which celebrated the battle of Vittoria; she had also the happiness of getting a good sight of Mme. de Stael, who was a great friend of the Perrys. 'She is almost as much followed in the gardens as the Princess,' she says, pouring out her wonders, her pleasures, her raptures. She begins to read Burns with youthful delight, dilates upon his exhaustless imagination, ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... happily, amusing herself with her gardens and her shrubberies.' This ci-devant Empress and Kennedy and Co., the seedsmen, are in partnership, says Miss Edgeworth. And then among the lists of all the grand people Maria meets in London in 1813 (Madame de Stael is mentioned as expected), she gives an interesting account of an actual visitor, Peggy Langan, who was grand-daughter to Thady in CASTLE RACKRENT. Peggy went to England with Mrs. Beddoes, and was for thirty years in ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... gayety, the spite, and the venturesomeness of Lady Mary Wortley. We have not as yet much female poetry; but there is a truly feminine tenderness, purity, and elegance in the Psyche of Mrs. Tighe, and in some of the smaller pieces of Lady Craven. On some of the works of Madame de Stael—her Corinne especially—there is a still deeper stamp of the genius of her sex. Her pictures of its boundless devotedness—its depth and capacity of suffering—its high aspirations—its painful irritability, ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... I am not ashamed to say, in the words, though not in the spirit of Emperor Julian, 'Galilean, thou hast conquered;' with Augustine, 'Let my soul calm itself in Thee; I say, let the great sea of my soul, that swelleth with waves, calm itself in Thee;' with De Stael, 'Inconcevable enigme de la vie; que la passion, ni la douleur, ni le genie ne peuvent decouvrir, vous revelerez-vous a la priere;' with practical Napoleon, 'I know men, and Jesus Christ was not a ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... invitations to the residence of the Princess of Wales, at Blackheath. In 1814, he visited Paris, where he was introduced to the Duke of Wellington; dined with Humboldt and Schlegel, and met his former friend and correspondent, Madame de Stael. A proposal of Sir Walter Scott, in 1816, to secure him a chair in the University of Edinburgh, was not attended with success. The "Specimens of the British Poets," a work he had undertaken for Mr Murray, appeared ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... general, had some of the great qualities of Napoleon, but he also resembled him occasionally in a singular lack of delicacy and good taste. We do not, however, find that he ever showed such mean malignity as the French general did when persecuting Madame de Stael, because in her Germany she had omitted to mention his campaigns ...
— The Story of Extinct Civilizations of the West • Robert E. Anderson
... of a knowledge of drawing: his colouring is as frequently severe and metallic, and there is rarely any expression of mind or soul in his faces. I saw at Laugier's the other day, his portrait of Madame de Stael—painted from recollection. He certainly had forgotten how to colour when he executed it. Forster (a very clever, sensible, and amiable young man) is busied, or rather has just finished, the engraving of a portrait of the Duke ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... worked for him in secret, and whom he understood to utilize. On the other hand, apparitions like those of a Sappho, a Diotima of the days of Socrates, a Hypatia of Alexander, a Madame Roland, Madame de Stael, George Sand, etc., deserve the greatest respect, and eclipse many a male star. The effect of women as mothers of great men is also known. Woman has achieved all that was possible to her under the, to her, as a whole, most unfavorable circumstances; all of which justifies ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... France, for instance, he would write a chanson; In England a six canto quarto tale; In Spain, he'd make a ballad or romance on The last war—much the same in Portugal; In Germany, the Pegasus he 'd prance on Would be old Goethe's (see what says De Stael); In Italy he 'd ape the 'Trecentisti;' In Greece, he sing some sort of hymn ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... possessions. At this time he held, for a short period, a situation as Professor at the school of Napoleonville, but soon returned to Germany, devoting himself wholly to a literary life, and in particular to the study of natural history. During his visit to France, he spent some time with Madame de Stael, whom he also visited in Switzerland. In 1811 he returned to Berlin; and in 1813 he wrote his "Peter Schlemihl," which marked him out as a man of distinguished and original genius. It was published in 1814 by his friend Fouque. When Count Runnjanzow resolved on undertaking a voyage ...
— Peter Schlemihl etc. • Chamisso et. al.
... works of George Sand will, in spite of all its vagaries, still be recognized. And more than this, since the period of sentimentalism will be seen as more extensive, and as the works of Richardson, Rousseau (of course only those which belong in this category), and of Madame de Stael and others, will be included in it, then we say that the better productions of our authoress will carry off the prize from all ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... humanity good service. But also, without doubt, many of his assailants, like those of other great men, have been mainly instigated by "that strongest of all antipathies, the antipathy of a second-rate mind to a first-rate one," [De Stael.] and by the envy which talent too ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... literature must not be omitted. The jailer of the press, he affected the patronage of letters; the proscriber of books, he encouraged philosophy; the persecutor of authors, and the murderer of printers, he yet pretended to the protection of learning; the assassin of Palm, the silencer of De Stael, and the denouncer of Kotzebue, he was the friend of David, the benefactor of De Lille, and sent his academic prize to the philosopher ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... sharp, and that his hired man had instructions to pass Miss LOGAN at any time. Accordingly, our syren departed hungrily for the capital of the French. Her career in Paris is well known to every mere ordinary schoolboy: therefore, wherefore dwell? Madame DE STAEL'S dressmaker called on her. A committee of strong-minded milliners solicited the honor of her acquaintance. GEORGE FRANCIS TRAIN proposed an alliance with her for the purpose of hurling imperial jackassery from its tottering throne. ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 25, September 17, 1870 • Various
... perfection of style, there is no inferiority. Our best novelists in point of composition, and of the management of detail, have mostly been women; and there is not in all modern literature a more eloquent vehicle of thought than the style of Madame de Stael, nor, as a specimen of purely artistic excellence, anything superior to the prose of Madame Sand, whose style acts upon the nervous system like a symphony of Haydn or Mozart. High originality of conception is, as I have said, what is ...
— The Subjection of Women • John Stuart Mill
... perhaps, too much forgotten. To explain by what net-work of circumstances the masculine incarnation of a young girl was brought about, why Felicite des Touches became a man and an author, and why, more fortunate than Madame de Stael, she kept her freedom and was thus more excusable for her celebrity, would be to satisfy many curiosities and do justice to one of those abnormal beings who rise in humanity like monuments, and whose fame is promoted ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... courted by princes, bowed to with respect as she went past in her carriage, and might choose among the oldest names in France and Navarre. That world which would have cried Raca to us, on seeing two handsome creatures united and happy, always did honor to Madame de Stael, in spite of her 'romances in real life,' because she had two hundred thousand francs a year. The world, which grovels before money or glory, will not bow down before happiness or virtue—for I could have ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... yourself lucky then, in not having known De Stael, Hannah More, Charlotte Bronte, ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... remarks of Madame de Stael, who personally knew much of General Lafayette, [Footnote: She was also an intimate friend of Madame de Lafayette. They were accused, in the days of suspicion and terror, of being too much engaged ...
— Memoirs of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... Therefore, the summer of 1827 sent them from rue St. Maur to the village of St. Ouen, on the banks of the Seine and a league from the gates of Paris. The village itself was not attractive, but pleasant was the home, next to a small chateau where Madame de Stael lived when her father, M. Necker, was in power. Some twenty-two spacious, well-furnished rooms this summer home had, in which once lived the Prince de Soubise when grand veneur of Louis XV, who went there at times to eat ...
— James Fenimore Cooper • Mary E. Phillips
... de Stael speaks the same language as the lady just cited, with more enthusiasm. Her eulogium on Rousseau was accidentally put into my hands, and her sentiments, the sentiments of too many of my sex, may serve ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... of study therein indicated might be indefinitely extended, but the few works given form an almost necessary starting-point. A less restricted list would, of course, include the Semi-Historic examples of such Foreign authors as Madame de Stael, Balzac, Spielhagen, &c. The purport of this book being primarily in the direction of Historical Romance proper, I have confined my attention here to a few works on the borderland of ...
— A Guide to the Best Historical Novels and Tales • Jonathan Nield
... indifference that Madame Granson herself was deceived about his feelings. This apparent unconcern explained her son's refusal to make a sacrifice for this marriage of his liberal opinions,—the term "liberal" having lately been created for the Emperor Alexander by, I think, Madame de Stael, through ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... classic touch, and her raiment was as plain as the plumage of a brown thrush in an autumn hedgerow. She was as homely as George Eliot, Mary Wollstonecraft, Rosa Bonheur, George Sand, or Madame De Stael. No two of the women named looked alike, but I once saw a composite photograph of their portraits and the picture sent no thrills along my keel. Their splendor was a matter of spirit. Have you ever seen the Duse?—there is but one. In repose this woman's face is absolute nullity. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... Argemone did not remark the stammering: the new thoughts startled and pained her; but there was a daring grace about them. She tried, as women will, to answer him with arguments, and failed, as women will fail. She was accustomed to lay down the law a la Madame de Stael, to savants and non-savants and be heard with reverence, as a woman should be. But poor truth-seeking Lancelot did not see what sex had to do with logic; he flew at her as if she had been a very barrister, ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... against Boisseuil is a remarkable trait. Madame de Stael has alluded to it in her best style. 'In France,' she says, 'we constantly see persons of distinguished rank, who, when accused of an improper action, will say—"It may have been wrong, but no one will dare assert ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... suggests a sea-voyage. He leaves law and his jolly companions,—Brevoort, Kemble, Paulding, and the rest,—and sails for Bordeaux. He wanders through Southern Europe delightedly,—meets Washington Allston at Rome, and is half tempted to turn painter,—sees Humboldt, De Stael, Cooke, Siddons; and while all England is jubilant over Nelson's victory, and all England mourning over Nelson's death, he ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... Miscreant Brougham, however, it was only long after the fact, and I was made acquainted with the language he had held of me on my leaving England (with regard to the D^ss^ of D.'s house),[*F] and his letter to Me. de Stael, and various matters for all of which the first time he and I foregather—be it in England, be it on earth—he shall account, and one of the two ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... Madame de Stael was right when she said she greatly preferred meeting interesting men and women to admiring places or scenery. Among my pleasantest memories of Los Angeles are my visits to Madame Fremont in her pretty red cottage, presented by loving friends. It is a privilege ...
— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn
... took up contributions in the churches dressed as a Neo-Greek) she was always hampered by shyness. She certainly attracted all the best and most gifted of her time, and had a noble fearlessness in friendship, and a constancy which she showed by following Madame de Stael into exile, and in her devotion to Ballenche and Chateaubriand. She had the genius of friendship, a native sincerity, a certain reality of nature—those fine qualities which so often accompany the shy that we almost, as we read biography and history, begin to ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... some citizen or other person was taken from the protection of our national flag without any form of trial whatever." So insolent and oppressive had British aggression become before the war of 1812, that Mr. Jefferson in his somewhat celebrated letter to Madame de Stael-Holstein of May 24, 1813, said, "No American could safely cross the ocean or venture to pass by sea from one to another of our own ports. It is not long since they impressed at sea two nephews of General Washington returning from ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... hanging on her front gate, duster in hand (she never conversed quite as well without it, and never did anything else with it), might have been a humble American descendant of Madame de Stael talking on the terrace at Coppet, with the famous sprig of olive in her fingers. She moved among her subjects like a barouche among express wagons, was heard after them as a song after sermons. That she did not fulfil the whole duty ...
— Marm Lisa • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... delegate. It generally was he who introduced distinguished guests who spoke at the opera house on Decoration Day. He called Mrs. Keller "Mother," and he wasn't above noticing the fit of a gown on a pretty feminine figure. He thought Ivy was an expurgated edition of Lillian Russell, Madame De Stael, and ...
— Buttered Side Down • Edna Ferber
... Mme. de Stael's familiar head-dress, twisted and wrapped around her head a la Turque, is said to have had its origin in the improvisation of the court hairdresser. Desperately groping for another version of the top-heavy erection, to humour the lovely ...
— Woman as Decoration • Emily Burbank
... person, my dear, who will probably come and speak to us; and if he enters into conversation, be careful to give him a favourable impression of you, for he is the celebrated Mr Brummell." The debutante was the daughter of a duke. It has been said that Madame de Stael considered herself as having failed to attract his approval, and that she spoke of it as the greatest malheur which had occurred to her during her stay in London, the next in point of calamity being that the Prince had not called ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... general, and thence its acknowledged inferiority to the Inferno. But the images of horror are much more powerful than those of happiness; and it is they which have entranced the world. "It is easier," says Madame de Stael, "to convey ideas of suffering than those of happiness; for the former are too well known to every heart, the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... of precious souvenirs as they visited the celebrated spots that lie like a necklace of pearls around the lovely lake, with Mont Blanc as the splendid opal that fitly clasps the chain. Calvin and Geneva, Voltaire and Ferney, De Stael and Coppet, Gibbon's garden at Lausanne, Byron's Prisoner at Chillon, Rousseau's chestnut grove at Clarens, and all the legends, relics, and memories of Switzerland's heroes, romancers, poets, and philosophers, were carefully studied, recorded, and enjoyed; ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott
... Scott tells about the head boy? He always fumbled over a particular button when he recited; so, one day, the button being furtively removed by Walter, the boy became abstracted, and Scott passed above him. Madame De Stael, as she talked, twisted a bit of paper, or rolled a leaf between her fingers. (Some have attributed this to her vanity, as she had very beautiful hands.) I believe friends came to note her necessity, and supplied her with leaves. Well, do what you will that is harmless, if it but ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder
... and sixty of the artillery. The newspapers of Paris speak of the convention with great boldness. To quiet the people, it is given out that corn is coming in from all quarters. Admiral Renaudin receives orders to put to sea. Baron de Stael is sent as ambassador from the King of Sweden to engage in friendship and alliance with the convention. Rhull ventures to pronounce in the convention an eulogy on the old monarchy. The deficit in the last month amounts to 660,000,000 livres, Discourse of Thibadeau ...
— Historical Epochs of the French Revolution • H. Goudemetz
... French audience do not permit the spirit of Hamlet's father to appear on the stage: "L'apparition se passe, (says Madame de Stael)[3], en entier dans la physionomie de Talma, et certes elle n'en est pas ainsi moins effrayante. Quand, au milieu d'un entretien calme et melancolique, tout a coup il apercoit le spectre, on suit tout; ses mouvemens dans les yeux qui le contemplent, et l'on ne peut douter de la ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... Priscillas. There was the Priscilla that her neighbors knew, the Priscilla that went to church, the Priscilla that taught Primary School No. 3. There was the other Priscilla, that read Chaucer and Shakespeare, Moliere and De Stael. With this Priscilla New Geneva had nothing to do. And it was the doubleness of her nature that ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... the word romantic, it is a convenient "exploding word," and in its general application signifies nothing more than "see how much finer I am than other people!"[1] but in literature and character I shall adhere to the definition of Madame de Stael, who uses the word vulgar as the reverse of poetical. Vulgarity (as I wish to apply the word) is the negative in all things. In literature, it is the total absence of elevation and depth in the ideas, and of elegance and delicacy in the expression of them. In character, ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... which knows no law, contributed further to educate his sense of right in politics, and to augment the distrust of power natural to a pupil of the great Whigs, of Burke, of Montesquieu, of Madame de Stael. On the other hand, as a pupil of Doellinger, his religious faith was deeper than could be touched by the recognition of facts, of which too many were notorious to make it even good policy to deny the rest; and he demanded with passion that history should set the follies and the crimes ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... may hide A Stael before whose mannish pride Our frailer sex shall tremble; Perchance this audience anserine May hiss (O fluttering Muse of mine!)— ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson
... to him good, and at the disposal of no finite power. It is enough if it unfold and discipline, and guide genius in its mission to the world. We are not to demand that it shall make of every man a Newton, a Milton, a Hall, a Chalmers, a Mason, a Washington; or of every woman a Sappho, a De Stael, a Roland, ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... did not adhere to his revolutionary ideas. After the 10th of August, 1792, he withdrew to Switzerland, at Coppet, near his friend Madame de Stael. Under the Empire he held himself apart. He had become as conservative as he had been liberal, as religious as he had been Voltairian. Under the Restoration, he was one of the most convinced supporters of the throne and the altar. Minister of Foreign ...
— The Duchess of Berry and the Court of Charles X • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... "the nobly pensive St. John!" I might add, that this seat has received, among other visiters, Sir Samuel Romilly, Sir George Beaumont, Sir Humphry Davy—poets as well as philosophers, Madame de Stael, Dugald Stewart, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 326, August 9, 1828 • Various
... delicacy, its sensitiveness, and passion. But at twenty-five he was exercising a wonderful charm, and had already defined for himself his peculiar line of intellectual activity. He had an odd, attractive gift of conversation, or rather of monologue, as Madame de Stael observed of him, full of bizarreries, with the rapid alternations of a dream, and here or there an unexpected summons into a world [71] strange to the hearer, abounding in images drawn from a sort of divided imperfect life, the consciousness of the opium-eater, as of one to whom the external ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... banking house. His ambitious wife had pushed him into the government service that she might establish a position for her daughter who afterwards as the wife of the Swedish minister in Paris, Baron de Stael, became a famous literary figure of ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... England—all of them have been immoral. Publicity to women is like handling to peaches—the bloom comes off, whether or not any other harm occurs. In literature, the great feminine figures, George Sand, Madame de Sevigne, Madame de Stael, George Eliot—all were banned and at least one—the first—was out of the pale. Creative thought has in it the germ of masculinity. Genius in a woman, as we usually describe genius, means masculinity, which, of all things, to real men is abhorrent in woman. True genius in woman is the antithesis ...
— The Delicious Vice • Young E. Allison
... the centre of the Parisian literary coterie. Liszt and Chopin held the musical world in the bondage of sweet sounds. Into this little inner circle Margaret entered, and did not fail to make her mark there. She was a second Madame de Stael in conversation, and in her little ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... nature in the little departments of life—dressing crape; reviving black silk; converting narrow hems into broad hems; and in short, who so busy, who so important, as the ladies of Glenfern? As Madame de Stael, or de Something says, "they fulfilled their destinies." Their walk lay amongst threads and pickles; their sphere extended from the garret to the pantry; and often as they sought to diverge from it, their instinct always led them to return to it, as the tract in which they were destined ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... dispensations of Providence towards myself, and its righteous judgments on my neighbors!" Doubtless, God has ordained that sin and folly shall produce suffering, that the consequences may warn us from the causes. Madame de Stael, whose brilliancy, I think, has rather thrown into the shade her very considerable common sense, has well said, "Le secret de l'existence, c'est le rapport de nos peines avec nos fautes." And to acknowledge the just and inevitable ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... the alembic of His mind they came out with new meaning. His originality consisted in His discriminating appropriation of His inheritance, and in His using it so that it became alive with new power. Madame de Stael said that Rousseau "invented nothing, but set everything on fire." Jesus took the religion of Israel, and lived its life with God, and after Him it possessed a kindling flame it had never shown before. The faith of a small people in a corner of the Roman Empire, with a few thousands of ...
— Some Christian Convictions - A Practical Restatement in Terms of Present-Day Thinking • Henry Sloane Coffin
... in "Lettres tres sur l'Angleterre par A. de Stael Holstein." "King George III. once gave directions for closing up a gate and a road in his own park at Richmond, which had been free to foot passengers for many years. A citizen of Richmond, who found the road convenient to the inhabitants of that village, took up the cause of his neighbours. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, No. 355., Saturday, February 7, 1829 • Various
... before, no brilliant sayings from her lips have been transmitted to posterity. But I suspect that the shivering soldiers on the bleak hillsides at Valley Forge found more comfort in the warm socks she knitted than they could have in the bon mots of a Madame de Stael or in the grace of a Josephine and that her homely interest in their welfare tied their hearts closer to their Leader and ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth
... Oeuvres completes de Madame la Baronne de Stael, publiees par son Fils. Precedees d'une notice sur le caractere et les ecrits de Madame de Stael, par Madame Necker de Saussure. Paris, 17 vols. 8vo. and 17 ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein
... Progress of Skepticism: Montesquieu, Voltaire. —3. French Literature during the Revolution: D'Holbach, D'Alembert, Diderot, J. J. Rousseau, Buffon, Beaumarchais, St. Pierre, and others. —4. French Literature under the Empire: Madame de Stael, Chateaubriand, Royer-Collard, Ronald, De Maistre.—5. French Literature from the Age of the Restoration to the Present Time. History: Thierry, Sismondi, Thiers, Mignet, Martin, Michelet, and others. Poetry and the Drama; Rise of the Romantic ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... I have almost entirely renounced, because whenever I have a really interesting one in my hand, I find the most cruel difficulty in laying it down before I reach the last page. That, however, does not answer in my case; and since the time when through the reading of Madame De Stael's Corinne, two dinners, one great wash, and seventeen lesser domestic affairs all came to a stand-still, and my domestic peace nearly suffered shipwreck, I have made a resolution to give up all novel-reading, at least for the present. But still it is so necessary for me ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... where libraries, galleries, architecture, laboratories, savants, and leisure, were to be had, and who did not quite trust the compensations of poverty and nakedness. Socrates loved Athens; Montaigne, Paris; and Madame de Stael said, she was only vulnerable on that side (namely, of Paris). It has its favorable aspect. All the geniuses are usually so ill-assorted and sickly, that one is ever wishing them somewhere else. ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... however, this knowledge of how and when to digress, and not easy to be learnt. Gerard de St. Amand died of grief in his middle age because Louis XIV. could not bear his reading of a poem on the Moon, in which he praised the King for his skill in swimming. On the other hand Madame de Stael obtained almost all the material for her literary work by a consummate skill in directing the digressions of conversation. Upon whatever subject her pen was engaged, that was the theme to ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... solemn premeditation, which tends, as Madame de Stael says, to bring more poetry into life, some women, in whom virtuous mothers either from considerations of worldly advantage of duty or sentiment, or through sheer hypocrisy, have inculcated steadfast principles, take the overwhelming fancies by which they are assailed for ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... style—as Hooker, Taylor, Burke, Canning, Erskine, Fox, etc., after which I shall take to French literature, and make myself as well acquainted with Voltaire, Moliere, Bossuet, Massillon, Flechier, and Condorcet, as I am with Mme. de Stael and Rousseau and Montesquieu and Volney. This will be work enough for another year; and what fit may then come upon me, it is impossible to see. My views on population are confirmed by every fresh calculation I see, and Sadler's new work affords me the means of controverting his ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 7: A Sketch • John Morley
... strangers, why not foreigners?—if foreigners, who so likely as the French? Signor Brunoni spoke broken English like a Frenchman; and, though he wore a turban like a Turk, Mrs Forrester had seen a print of Madame de Stael with a turban on, and another of Mr Denon in just such a dress as that in which the conjuror had made his appearance, showing clearly that the French, as well as the Turks, wore turbans. There could be no doubt Signor Brunoni was a Frenchman—a French spy ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... vintage scenes, the mid-day halt for luncheon eaten in the open air, the afternoon start, the front seat of the carriage heaped with purple grapes, used to fire my youthful imagination and now recalls Madame de Stael's line on perfect happiness: "To be young! to be in ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... Scott, Lord Cornwallis, Dr. Wistar, Bishop Soule John Bright, Jenny Lind Goldsmidt, and Dr. Gall are good representatives of this temperament. Fig. 86 is an excellent illustration of it, finely blended and well balanced, in the person of Madame de Stael. This temperament requires fewer tonics and stimulants than the lymphatic. This constitution is best able to restore vital losses. It is a vital temperament, in other words, it combines favorably with all the others, and better adapts ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... like the hermits of old, the visits of pilgrims, not only from his own nation, but from the farthest boundaries of Europe. Here too is Bonnet's abode, and, a few steps beyond, the house of that astonishing woman Madame de Stael: perhaps the first of her sex, who has really proved its often claimed equality with, the nobler man. We have before had women who have written interesting-novels and poems, in which their tact at observing drawing-room characters has availed them; but never since the days of Heloise ...
— The Vampyre; A Tale • John William Polidori
... the Holy Wars. They live in our romances, in our tragedies, in our poetry, in our language, in our hearts. Of what use are such feelings, say the partisans of utility? "Of what use," answers Madame De Stael, "is the Apollo Belvidere, or the poetry of Milton; the paintings of Raphael, or the strains of Handel? Of what use is the rose or the eglantine; the colours of autumn, or the setting of the sun?" And yet what object ever moved the heart ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... generally admitted that public liberty, and the perpetuity of a free constitution, rest on the virtue and intelligence of the community which enjoys it. How is that virtue to be inspired, and how is that intelligence to be communicated? Bonaparte once asked Madame de Stael in what manner he could best promote the happiness of France. Her reply is full of political wisdom. She said, "Instruct the mothers of the French people." Mothers are, indeed, the affectionate and effective teachers of ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... tears. Monsieur Paulin Limayrac was chief pall-bearer, and demonstrated in the columns of "La Presse" that Madame Emile de Girardin had herself alone more genius than Sappho, Corinne, Madame de Sevigne, Madame de Stael, and Madame ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... true individuality, man and woman can meet without antagonism and opposition. The motto should not be forgive one another; it should be, understand one another. The oft-quoted sentence of Mme. de Stael: "To understand everything means to forgive everything," has never particularly appealed to me; it has the odor of the confessional; to forgive one's fellow being conveys the idea of pharisaical superiority. To understand one's fellow being suffices. ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906 • Various
... reach. It is generally asserted that they were lacking in essential virility and stamina; as to the brilliancy of their acquisitions, their fineness of appreciation, and their wit, there can be no question whatever. Madame de Stael called them "the fathers of modern criticism," a title which has not been challenged by the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... regards productive power, Amiel's mind was of no inferior quality, and his journal gained a sympathy which the author had failed to obtain in his life. In addition to the Journal, he produced several volumes of poetry and wrote studies on Erasmus, Madame de Stael and other writers. He died in Geneva on the 11th of March 1881. His chief poetical works are Grains de mil, Il penseroso, Part du reve, Les Etrangeres, Charles le Temeraire, Romancero ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... date, previous to official adulation and the adoption of a recognized type, we see him face to face in two portraits drawn from life, one physical, by a truthful painter, Guerin, and the other moral, by a superior woman, Madame de Stael, who to the best European culture added tact and worldly perspicacity. Both portraits agree so perfectly that each seems to interpret and complete the other. "I saw him for the first time,"[1133] says Madame ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... too might say that 'we have not much in common,' if I were only to compare mind to mind, and, when my poor Carry says something less profound than Madame de Stael might have said, smile on her in contempt from the elevation of logic and Latin. Yet, when I remember all the little sorrows and joys that we have shared together, and feel how solitary I should have been without her—oh, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... these were Edward Montague, Charles Standish, Hervey Aston, Arthur Upton, "Kangaroo" Cook, Benjamin Constant, Dupin, Casimir Perier, as well as the chief Orleanists. On one occasion, I recollect seeing there George Canning and the celebrated Madame de Stael. Cornwall, the eldest son of the Bishop of Worcester, had, from some unaccountable cause, a misunderstanding with Madame de Stael, who appeared very excited, and said to Lady Oxford, in a loud voice, "Notre ami, M. Cornewal, est grosso, rosso, e furioso." It should ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow
... anything about his books. He doesn't like women to talk about books. He says they only pretend—even the clever ones. Except, of course, Madame de Stael. He can only say she was ugly, and I don't deny it. But I have about used up Madame de Stael,' she added, dropping into another sigh as soft ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... devising a scheme of public education, dictating bulletins and articles for the 'Moniteur,' revising the details of the budgets, giving instructions to architects as to alterations to be made at the Tuileries and the Church of the Madelaine, throwing an occasional sarcasm at Madame de Stael and the Parisian journals, interfering to put down a squabble at the Grand Opera, carrying on a correspondence with the Sultan of Turkey and the Schah of Persia, so that while his body was at Finkenstein, his mind seemed to be working at a hundred ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... whether he came to save or to destroy, was no longer a subject, but a master. The general told them to let him in. As he passed, a voice called out, "There goes Cromwell." Lafayette stood still and answered, "Cromwell would not have come alone." Madame de Stael watched him as he entered the royal presence. His countenance, she says, was calm. Nobody ever saw it otherwise. Lewis received him with a sensation of relief, for he felt that he was safe. At that moment the sovereign ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... they gave in their first aspirations, is yet true; and a better valor and a purer truth shall one day organize their belief. Or why should a woman liken herself to any historical woman, and think, because Sappho,[359] or Sevigne,[360] or De Stael,[361] or the cloistered souls who have had genius and cultivation, do not satisfy the imagination and the serene Themis,[362] none can,—certainly not she. Why not? She has a new and unattempted problem to solve, ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... I was twenty, would have it that I was like Rousseau, and Madame de Stael used to say so too in 1813, and the 'Edinburgh Review' has something of the sort in its critique on the fourth canto of 'Childe Harold'. I can't see any point of resemblance:—he wrote prose, I verse: he was of ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... from la Charite, and from Nevers, on the right bank; from Lere, Vailly, Argent, Blancafort, and Aubigny, on the left bank, to be introduced to Madame de la Baudraye, as they used in Switzerland, to be introduced to Madame de Stael. Those who only once heard the round of tunes emitted by this musical snuff-box went away amazed, and told such wonders of Dinah as made all the women ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... reaction from this criticism, indicated by the praise of Madame de Stael (De la Litterature, 1804), by Guizot's essay accompanying a revision of Le Tourneur's translation (1821), and later in the appreciation of Mezieres's Shakespeare ses [OE]uvres et ses Critiques (1860), in several translations, and in Victor Hugo's eulogy ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson
... poetical aspect, is the union of passion and imagination. I had foolishly believed that this calm, sweet-voiced woman had loved me, but those letters made it plain that I had been utterly fooled. "Le mystere de l'existence," said Madame de Stael to her daughter, "c'est la rapport de nos erreurs avec ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... the part of the printers and the limits of a duodecimo page did not forbid my reproducing here, in all their glory, the unique head-lines which precede the article in question. Any pageant introduced by music is impressive, says Madame de Stael. At least she says something of that sort, only it is in French, and I can not remember it exactly. And so any newspaper article is startling when introduced by the braying of head-lines. Fonts of type for displayed lines were not abundant in the office of the Windmill, but they were very stunning, ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... Duchess of Angouleme. He was also presented to the Duke of Orleans, at the Palais Royal, who spoke with grateful remembrance of hospitalities he had received in America. Mr. Adams was often in the society of Lafayette, Madame de Stael, Humboldt, Constant, and other eminent persons, and was deeply interested in observing the effect of all changes in the laws and government ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... young, once upon a time the intriguing wife of a now dead and forgotten diplomat. Her loud pretensions to be one of the leaders of modern thought and of modern sentiment, she sheltered (like Voltaire and Mme. de Stael) on the republican territory of Geneva. Driving through the streets in her big landau she exhibited to the indifference of the natives and the stares of the tourists a long-waisted, youthful figure of hieratic stiffness, with a pair of big gleaming eyes, rolling restlessly ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... celebrated financier, born at Geneva, banker in Paris; married the accomplished Susanne Curchod, the rejected of Gibbon, and became by her the father of Mme. de Stael; was a man of high repute for probity and business capacity; became in 1777 Director-General of Finance in France, tried hard and honestly, by borrowing and retrenchment, to restore the fallen public credit, but was after five years dismissed; was recalled in ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... situation as absolute sovereign. He studied the laws of etiquette as closely as he studied the condition of his troops. He saw that the men of the old regime were more conversant in the art of flattery, more eager than the new men. As Madame de Stael says: "Whenever a gentleman of the old court recalled the ancient etiquette, suggested an additional bow, a certain way at knocking at the door of an ante-chamber, a ceremonious method of presenting a despatch, of folding ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... 'Thoughts on History,' 'Formative Influences,' 'Madame de Stael,' 'Israel among the Nations,' 'Old-age Pensions,' appeared originally in the American Review, the Forum—the first under the title of 'The Art of Writing History'; 'Ireland in the Light of History,' in the North American Review. ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... for instance, he would write a chanson; In England a six-canto quarto tale; In Spain, he'd make a ballad or romance on The last war—much the same in Portugal; In Germany, the Pegasus he'd prance on Would be old Goethe's—(see what says de Stael) In Italy, he'd ape the 'Trecentisti'; In Greece, he'd sing some sort of ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... he would write a chanson; In England a six-canto quarto tale; In Spain, he'd make a ballad or romance on The last war—much the same in Portugal; In Germany, the Pegasus he'd prance on Would be old Goethe's—(see what says de Stael) In Italy he'd ape the 'Trecentisti;' In Greece, he'd sing some sort of hymn like ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... that Napoleon should possess an heir. She also was fully aware that throughout France marriage had long been regarded but as a partnership of convenience, to be formed and sundered almost at pleasure. "Marriage," said Madame de Stael, has become but the sacrament of adultery." The nation, under the influence of these views, would condemn her for selfishly refusing assent to an arrangement apparently essential to the repose of France and of Europe Never ...
— Napoleon Bonaparte • John S. C. Abbott
... Lamartine, and Victor Hugo, a lyric sun, a philosophic poet, later, perhaps in consequence of the Revolution of 1830, becoming a "Symbolist." He has been held to occupy a middle ground between De Musset and Chenier, but he has also something suggestive of Madame de Stael, and, artistically, he has much in common with Chateaubriand, though he is more coldly impersonal and probably much more sincere in his philosophy. If Sainte-Beuve, however, calls the poet in his Nouveaux Lundis a "beautiful angel, who has ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... and Miscellanies. Hero and Hero-Worship. Goethe's poems, plays, and novels. Plutarch's Lives. Madame Guion. Paradise Lost and Comus. Schiller's Plays. Madame de Stael. Bettine. Louis XIV. Jane Eyre. Hypatia. Philothea. Uncle Tom's Cabin. Emerson's ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... capacity or partiality for flowery writing, the absence of which in me some critics have deplored, I might almost call Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter. There is the season, of little positive crop but important seed-sowing,—the season in which the greater writers, Chateaubriand and Mme. de Stael, perform their office. Here, too, quite humble folk—Pigault-Lebrun completing what has been already dealt with, Ducray-Duminil and others doing work to be dealt with here, and Paul de Kock most of all, get the novel of ordinary life ready in various ways: ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... round and perfect as a star" [Alex. Smith]; Dichtung und Wahrheit [Ger]; furor poeticus[Lat]; "his virtues formed the magic of his song" [Hayley]; "I do but sing because I must" [Tennyson]; "I learnt life from the poets" [de Stael]; licentia vatum[Lat]; mutum est pictura poema[Lat]; "O for a muse of fire!" [Henry V]; "sweet food of sweetly uttered knowledge" [Sidney]; "the true poem is the poet's mind" [Emerson]; Volk der Dichter und Denker[Ger]; "wisdom married to immortal ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... that "The most unnatural action is yet natural," is a noble suggestion of tolerance; but human judgment can scarcely go to the length of Madame de Stael's opinion, when she claims that "To understand all actions is to pardon all." We must brush away the sophisms which insist that all standards are merely relative, and that time and place alone decide on right and wrong. Were that so, not only all morality, but all ...
— An Ethnologist's View of History • Daniel G. Brinton
... had a sound instinct for her art, disfigured though her later writings are by what Madame de Stael called her triste utilite. Her first story is her most artistic production. Castle Rackrent is simply a pleasant satire upon the illiterate and improvident gentry who have always been too common in her country. In this book she holds no brief; she never stops to preach; her moral is implied, ...
— Irish Books and Irish People • Stephen Gwynn
... Spanish Court. The great influence which she unquestionably exerted over her contemporaries was wholly due to her astounding physical beauty. Her intellectual equipment was meagre in the extreme. At one period of her life she courted the society of Madame de Stael and other intellectuals, but Princess Helene Ligne said of her that she "had more jargon than wit." As regards her physical attractions, however, no dissentient voice has ever been raised. "Her beauty," the Duchess d'Abrantes says in her memoirs, "of which the sculptors of antiquity give us but an ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... have done well. I pride myself on some diplomatic experience. You have negotiated your coup in a manner worthy of a De Stael. You would adorn the service. I wonder if you realize the possibilities of your future in an international sphere. To you I have no fear of ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... feeling in England on the foreign situation, and also give a glimpse of the wayward authoress, Madame de Stael, who was just then on her way back to France after a banishment ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... society, English or foreign, for I had seen all that was worth seeing in the former before I left England, and at the time of life when I was more disposed to like it; and of the latter I had a sufficiency in the first few years of my residence in Switzerland, chiefly at Madame de Stael's, where I went sometimes, till I grew tired of conversazioni and carnivals, with their appendages; and the bore is, that if you go once, you are expected to be there daily, or rather nightly. I went the round of the most noted soirees ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... centuries are brought far more vividly before us in these free-spoken and often amusing chronicles, than in all the formal histories. Among the most readable of these (comparatively few having been translated into English) are the Memoirs of Marmontel, Rousseau, Madame Remusat, Amiel, and Madame De Stael. The recently published memoirs by Imbert de St. Amand, of court life in France in the times of Marie Antoinette, Josephine, Marie Louise, and other periods, while hastily written and not always ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... for putting her own hand to the work of drawing up the memorial of her husband and of her brother-in-law, the Count of Toulouse. "The greater part of the nights was employed at it," says Madame de Stael, at that time Mdlle. do Launay, a person of much wit, half lady's maid, half reader to the duchess. "The huge volumes, heaped up on her bed like mountains overwhelming her, caused her," she used to say, "to look, making due allowances, like Enceladus, buried under Mount ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... chooses rather to become familiar with the Greek classics. Herodotus and Homer win, with their "vowelled" Greek, his warmest enthusiasm; whole nights of fever are devoted to them; disturbing dreams of an Odyssey of his own come to him. "He felt in himself," says Madame de Stael, "an ardent attraction towards the South." In German imaginations even now traces are often to be found of that love of the sun, that weariness of the North (cette fatigue du nord), which carried the northern peoples away ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... told to the family at Bury, where Fanny Burney was staying. Several of the wealthier French refugees settled at Richmond, and there found Horace Walpole as charmer and friend. But the most distinguished group was that at Juniper Hall, near Dorking where finally Mme. de Stael and Talleyrand enlivened the dull days and long drives with unfailing stores of wit. We shall later on make the acquaintance of the French emigres in a ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... Madame de Stael was engrossed in political philosophy at an age when other girls are dressing dolls. Mozart, when but four years old, played the clavichord and composed minuets and other pieces still extant. The little Chalmers, with solemn air and earnest gestures, would preach often from a stool ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... men and women of genius of the Old World who abused the use of alcohol and opium, were Coleridge, James Thomson, Carew, Sheridan, Steele, Addison, Hoffman, Charles Lamb, Madame de Stael, Burns, Savage, Alfred de Musset, Kleist, Caracci, Jan Steen, Morland Turner (the painter), Gerard de Nerval, Hartley Coleridge, Dussek, Handel, Glueck, Praga, Rovani, and the poet Somerville. This list is by no means complete, as the well-informed reader may see at a glance; it serves ...
— Religion and Lust - or, The Psychical Correlation of Religious Emotion and Sexual Desire • James Weir
... that M. Hallays reveals to us. Instead of visiting battlefields, he shows us that English travellers may find ample interest of other kind. The artist, the ecclesiologist, the art-loving have here a storehouse of unrevealed treasure. A little-read but weighty writer, Mme. de Stael, has truly averred that the most beautiful lands in the world, if devoid of famous memories and if bearing no impress of great events, cannot be compared in interest to historic regions. Hardly a spot of the annexed provinces but is stamped with indelible ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... absorbed all his mental powers. All else was to him only life's customary routine. To such customary routine belonged his conversations with the staff, the letters he wrote from Tarutino to Madame de Stael, the reading of novels, the distribution of awards, his correspondence with Petersburg, and so on. But the destruction of the French, which he alone foresaw, ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... Stael did a world of work in her time; and one day, while she was seated amid instruments of music, all of which she had mastered, and amid manuscript books which she had written, some one said to her: "How do you find time to attend to all these things?" "Oh," ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... De Stael— Leman![75] these names are worthy of thy shore, Thy shore of names like these! wert thou no more, Their memory thy remembrance would recall: To them thy banks were lovely as to all, But they have made them lovelier, for the lore Of mighty minds doth hallow in ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... there of her"—of her, whose genuine worth excused, whose all-commanding talents threw into shade, those failings which belonged to the weakness of her sex, and her warm feelings and imagination. The servant girl who showed us the apartments, had been fifteen years in Madame de Stael's service. All the servants had remained long in the family, "elle etait si bonne et si charmante maitresse!" A picture of Madame de Stael when young, gave me the idea of a fine countenance and figure, though the features were irregular. In the bust, the expression is ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... perfect mania for literary distinction. His own education was somewhat imperfect, but he is determined his children shall be prodigies. His first-born turns out a girl, who is to write like Madame de Stael,—to be an able, accomplished woman. He bores her with literature from her earliest years, reads extracts from Milton to her when she is only eight years old and is secretly longing to be playing with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... passed to some mystic Mecca they were pleased to entitle 'a parish.' Ah" (continued the German with much bonhomie), "it was a pity to see in a great nation so much value attached to such a trifle as money. But what surprised me greatly was the tone of your poetry. Madame de Stael, who knew perhaps as much of England as she did of Germany, tells us that its chief character is the chivalresque; and, excepting only Scott, who, by the way, is not English, I did not find one chivalrous poet among you. Yet," continued the ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... away with you the memory of a dull evening, but I could not talk, I could not. Oh, Dic—" Thereupon she began to weep, and Dic, though pained, found a certain selfish joy in comforting her, compared to which the conversation of Madame de Stael herself would have been poor and commonplace. Then came the gate, a sweet face wet with tears, and good-by ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major |
