"Madame de Stael" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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
... was oppressed by malignant rivals in his own times, has been noticed by Madame de Stael, as having left behind him an actual prophecy of the French Revolution: this was Guibert, who, in his Commentary on Folard's Polybius, published in 1727, declared that "a conspiracy is actually forming in Europe, by means at once so subtle and efficacious, that ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... 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 ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... 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, ...
— Religion and Lust - or, The Psychical Correlation of Religious Emotion and Sexual Desire • James Weir
... own roof-tree when possible. 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 his dinner—"in ...
— James Fenimore Cooper • Mary E. Phillips
... The eloquent and thinking Madame de Stael has asserted that "Hobbes was an Atheist and a Slave." Yet I still think that Hobbes believed, and proved, the necessary existence of a Deity, and that he loved freedom, as every sage desires it. It is now ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... think of the brain she'll have," 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
... us, from Shakspeare and Otway. I have not yet sinned against it in verse, nor do I know that I shall do so, having been tuneless since I crossed the Alps, and feeling, as yet, no renewal of the "estro." By the way, I suppose you have seen "Glenarvon." Madame de Stael lent it me to read from Copet last autumn. It seems to me that, if the authoress had written the truth, and nothing but the truth—the whole truth—the romance would not only have been more romantic, but more entertaining. As for the likeness, the picture can't be good—I did not ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 474 - Vol. XVII. No. 474., Supplementary Number • Various
... 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. ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein
... obtain an audience of the emperor, or even an interview with Count Nesselrode, but Lafayette took up the cause with his hearty zeal for everything that concerned the United States, and, in a long interview with the emperor at the house of Madame de Stael, submitted to him the view taken by the United States of the controversy, and obtained from him his promise to exert his personal influence with the British government on his arrival at London. Baron von Humboldt, the Prussian minister at Paris, who had been influenced by ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... 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. Piozzi, Moral ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... who 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 ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... 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 renounced," ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... 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, and inextinguishable thirst for ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... soon found occupation congenial to their 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 ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... of Merle d'Aubigne, the truest friend of Henry 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 was a native of Geneva, and under ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... 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 in the nursery. ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... French Revolution 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. ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... picturesque descriptions, however, Miss Bremer's book on Switzerland and Italy is hardly a success. She had not the qualifications of a Madame de Stael, and her observations, therefore, are frequently superficial. Moreover, she seems to have suffered in self-appreciation. In Sweden she shone as a great star in the literary firmament; and she appears to have been ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... 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 ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 25, September 17, 1870 • Various
... modern times, Madame de Stael had a dish of very unique pattern, and, when driven by the command of Napoleon from her beloved Paris, she carried her chafing-dish with her into exile as one of her most cherished household gods. At the present day among the favored few, ...
— Salads, Sandwiches and Chafing-Dish Dainties - With Fifty Illustrations of Original Dishes • Janet McKenzie Hill
... 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 ...
— The Story of Extinct Civilizations of the West • Robert E. Anderson
... amenity in leading talk. This grows out of a universal eagerness in France to take pains in conversation and to learn its unwritten behests. The uninitiated suspect little of the insight and care which matures even the natural conversational ability of a Madame de Stael or a Francisque Sarcey. The initiated know that the same principles which make the French prodigious conversationalists make them capable and charming hosts and hostesses. The talker who can follow in conversation knows how to lead, and vice versa. Without a leader or "moderator," ...
— Conversation - What to Say and How to Say it • Mary Greer Conklin
... remarked 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 ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth
... have accused her of ambition; and yet she loved him; but love is not always absolute devotion and self-abnegation; love is not always a virtue; it is often the result of egotism; it is, as Madame de Stael says, one personality in two persons, or a mere double personality. Frances loved the prince royal, but not the less had she ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... for his taste or for Mademoiselle Curchod's 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 Necker and Edward Gibbon. This ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... 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 ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... novel, but this pleasure 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, ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... after, at seventeen, she writes: "I am studying Madame de Stael, Epictetus, Milton, Racine, and the Castilian ballads, with great delight.... I am engrossed in reading the elder Italian poets, beginning with Berni, from whom I shall proceed to Pulci and Politian." How almost infinitely above "beaus and ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... last dined with Rogers,—Madame de Stael, Mackintosh, Sheridan, Erskine, and Payne Knight, Lady Donegall and Miss R. there. Sheridan told a very good story of himself and Madame de Recamier's handkerchief; Erskine a few stories of himself only. She is going to write a big book about England, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... identified with that necessity 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 ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... 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 of woman did not occur to her fascinated ...
— Marm Lisa • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the elite of Paris society. Among 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 ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow
... The following 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 in political affairs.] and who was well acquainted with characters and events connected ...
— Memoirs of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... his leave, Miss Beaufort, as was her custom, retired for an hour to read in her dressing-room, before she directed her attention to the toilet. She opened a book, and ran over a few pages of Madame de Stael's Treatise on the Passions; but such reasoning was too abstract for her present frame of mind, and she laid the ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... broad jest, its thirst for superficial excitement. Whatever his individual preferences, his mental organization is so large and happy, that he enjoys, and can do equal justice to, Father Lacordaire and M. Michelet, to Madame de Stael and M. Guizot, to Corneille and Goethe, to Fenelon and M. Renan, ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... the same whether housed in golden cages with every want supplied, or wandering in the dreary deserts of life, friendless and forsaken. Long ago we of America heard the deep yearnings of the souls of women in foreign lands for freedom responsive to our own. Mary Wollstonecraft, Madame de Stael, Madam Roland, George Sand, Frederica Bremer, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Frances Wright and George Eliot alike have pictured the wrongs of woman in poetry and prose. Though divided by vast mountain ranges, oceans and plains, yet the psalms of our lives have been in ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... flood of panegyrics and of 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 George Sand, ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... 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 next to Priestley; ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps
... tanners, who did not try to counteract his inclination, shown when a mere child, for study. He was sent in 1807 to Lefebvre, a maternal uncle, who was vicar of Mer, a small city on the Loire near Blois. Under the kindly care of Madame de Stael, he was a student in the college of Vendome from 1811 to 1814. Lambert met there Barchon de Penhoen and Jules Dufaure. He was apparently a poor scholar, but finally developed into a prodigy; he suffered the persecutions of Father Haugoult, by whose brutal hands his "Treatise on the Will," composed ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... chateau, formerly the property of M. Necker, and now the residence of his daughter, Madame de Stael, who will probably be as celebrated in future times for her writings, as her father for the administration of the French finances. I was to have accompanied two friends to a fete given here by Madame de Stael, but unfortunately we did not return in time from our excursion ...
— A tour through some parts of France, Switzerland, Savoy, Germany and Belgium • Richard Boyle Bernard
... 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 ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... 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 this means no assumed childishness, no condescending baby-talk ...
— The Education of the Child • Ellen Key
... or dropping a sentence, and I realized at last that I was in the presence of a great writer. Not a great talker. It is clear that George Eliot never was that. Impossible for her to "talk" her books, or evolve her books from conversation, like Madame de Stael. She was too self-conscious, too desperately reflective, too rich in second-thoughts for that. But in tete-a-tete, and with time to choose her words, she could—in monologue, with just enough stimulus from a companion ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... du Progres," who came near being tried by jury for publishing his "Organization of Labor," and who escaped from the clutches of the public prosecutor only by a juggler's trick; [68] Corinne,—I mean Madame de Stael,—who, in an ode, making a poetical comparison of the land with the waves, of the furrow of a plough with the wake of a vessel, says "that property exists only where man has left his trace," which makes property dependent upon the solidity of the elements; Rousseau, the apostle of ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... reading the life of Madame de Stael and 'Corinne.' I have felt an intense sympathy with many parts of that book, with many parts of her character. But in America feelings vehement and absorbing like hers become still more deep, morbid, and impassioned by the constant habits of self-government which the rigid forms of our society ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... to Louis the Eighteenth, and to the Duke and 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 ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... in this 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 of ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... 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 ...
— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn
... France; and Odillon Barrot, the popular idol at the commencement of the late revolution. De Tocqueville was there, the great writer on America; General Oudinot, and several other generals; the Duc de Broglie, great-grandson of Madame de Stael; Eugene Sue, the novelist; Coquerel, the French Protestant preacher; and M. de Remusat, the son of that lady who has given us her experiences of the court of ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... 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, ...
— Buttered Side Down • Edna Ferber
... 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 on her in person. The Beau perfectly ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... Byron and Thomas Moore; and had the honour of frequent 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 in 1819. ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... the Taj. The marble and red sandstone came from Rajpootana, the diamonds and jaspers from the Punjab, the carnelians and agates from Tibet, the corals from Arabia, the sapphires and other precious stones from Ceylon, and the genius that combined them all came from Heaven. Madame de Stael never saw this gem of India, and yet she said that architecture was frozen music. Emerson would have called it a ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... stood amazed, and 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, had occupied him to the exclusion ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... police, to be 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 student, ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... might not be true. But 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, and hunted her mercilessly up and down through all sorts of charming sophisms, ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... 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, then, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... If we mistake not, Madame de Stael, in her Revolution Francaise, had this performance of Schiller's in her eye. Her work is constructed on a similar though a rather looser plan of arrangement: the execution of it bears the same relation to that of Schiller; it is less irregular; more ambitious ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... impression upon Europe. This pamphlet was generally regarded as a precursor of the memoirs which Napoleon was thought to be writing in his place of exile. The report soon spread that the work was conceived and executed by Madame de Stael. Madame de Stael, for her part, attributed it to Benjamin Constant, from whom she was at this time separated by some disagreement." Afterwards it came to be known that the author was the Marquis Lullin de Chateauvieux, a man in society, whom no one ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... don't know 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 and ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Maid of Orleans, in the first Part of Henry VI., is associated with the greatest name in our literature, and therefore, we presume, must be treated with respect; but it is the only title to respect we can discover in it. We cannot, with Madame de Stael, trace the inspired maid in any part of the play. La Pucelle gives us, it is true, in the commencement, a very good account of herself; as she was playing the part of an impostor, it was not probable she would do otherwise: ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... Napoleon because the glamour of 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 ...
— Simon Bolivar, the Liberator • Guillermo A. Sherwell
... seen me not only at the time I mention but before and after, had always passed me without notice. One Sunday, when in the gallery of the Tuileries with Madame de Stael, the Queen, with her usual suite, of which Madame Campan formed one, was going, according to custom, to hear Mass, Her Majesty perceived me and most graciously addressed me in German. Madame Campan appeared greatly ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 3 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... was in some ways a generation behind his 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 to claim kinship ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... laws of behavior. Rousseau was to many as an inspired prophet. No woman's library was then considered complete which did not include Dr. Fordyce's Sermons and Dr. Gregory's "Legacy to His Daughters." Mrs. Piozzi and Madame de Stael were minor authorities, and Lord Chesterfield's Letters had their admirers and upholders. These writers Mary treats separately, after she has shown the result of the tacit teaching of men, taken collectively; and here what may be called ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... Maltravers, he was delighted at being told he was a much more interesting creature than that haughty personage, who wore his neckcloth like other people, and had not even those indispensable attributes of genius—black curls and a sneer. Fine society, which, as Madame de Stael well says, depraves the frivolous mind and braces the strong one, completed the ruin of all that was manly in Cesarini's intellect. He soon learned to limit his desire of effect or distinction to gilded saloons; and his vanity contented itself upon the scraps ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... experience. Her letters are full of spirit: not always strictly grammatical; not irreproachable in orthography; but vigorous and vivacious. After a lengthened interview with her, an enthusiast exclaimed, "Now do I understand how Goethe has become the man he is!" Wieland, Merck, Buerger, Madame de Stael, Karl August, and other great people sought her acquaintance. The Duchess Amalia corresponded with her as with an intimate friend; and her letters were welcomed eagerly at the Weimar Court. She was married at seventeen to a man for whom she had no love, and was only eighteen ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... youthful Scott. And the reason is not far to seek. The newcomers found England in possession of a native romanticism of a very robust type, by the side of which the imported article showed like a delicate exotic. Carlyle affirms that Madame de Stael's book was the precursor of whatever acquaintance with German literature exists in England. He himself worked valiantly to extend that acquaintance by his articles in the Edinburgh and Foreign Review, and by his translations from German romance. But he found ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... 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, ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... who has left us such charming memoirs, under the name of Madame de Stael, "do you believe in my prophecies ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... qualities than "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, and Christopher ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 326, August 9, 1828 • Various
... she was 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 ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... blooming orange tree. And then Pius IX, placing himself at the head of Italian regeneration, became popular as no man in Rome since Rienzi's time, In 1848 men heard with surprise, on the coast of the Adriatic, my name coupled in vivas with the name of Pius IX. But the sarcasm of Madame De Stael—that in Italy men became women—was still believed true; so that too many of the Italians themselves despaired of ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... less," I said. I did not rate myself with Madame DE STAEL nor with EDWARD FITZGERALD, but I forebore to mention these names because I thought that they would not be familiar to my questioner. If you happen to know Paradise Rents, Fulham, you will realise that neither Madame DE STAEL, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, April 5, 1916 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland
... 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 done good. ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... bosom is perpetually gushing forth, from the ideas which have come down to us from 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 as they have done, ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... particular as to furnish in themselves extensive reading. The notices of every person named would go far to serve as a brief biographical dictionary of Byron's contemporaries, whether known or unknown to fame. We get a concise account of Madame de Stael—her birth, books, and political opinions—very useful to those who had no previous acquaintance with her. Lady Morgan and Joanna Southcote obtain quite as much space as would be allotted to them in any handbook of celebrities. Beau Brummell ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... B. Rousseau, Fontenelle, Lamotte.—2. 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 School: Beranger, ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... 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,' ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... European light. Moreover, as one European critic has pointed out, it is also one of the first, and still one of the subtlest, studies in the psychology of sex and emancipation of woman of the nineteenth century. Madame de Stael's relations with the clever and ambitious young statesman and writer, Benjamin Constant, formed the chief source of her inspiration in writing "Corinne," as it formed his in writing "Adolphe." Madame de Stael died in ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... and Windham, with Mrs. Montague and Mrs. Thrale. Yet she was forced to own that she had never heard conversation before. The most animated eloquence, the keenest observation, the most sparkling wit, the most courtly grace, were united to charm her. For Madame de Stael was there, and M. de Talleyrand. There too was M. de Narbonne, a noble representative of French aristocracy; and with M. de Narbonne was his friend and follower General D'Arblay, an honourable and amiable man, with a handsome person, frank soldierlike manners, and ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the method 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 my ...
— A Guide to the Best Historical Novels and Tales • Jonathan Nield
... full of his subject, has evidently been thinking of his readers. His tone is that of a speaker with his audience before him. Madame de Stael actually composed in conversation, and her works are little more than imperfect records of her eloquent discourse. Innumerable productions have been read aloud, or handed round in private coteries, before being revised and published. The very excellence of the workmanship, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... 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. ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... doctrine puts him necessarily on his guard against appearances, sustains his apprehension under perplexity, and prepares him for recognising anywhere what he knows to be everywhere."[100] There is a popular saying of Madame de Stael, that we forgive whatever we really understand. The paradox has been judiciously pruned by her descendant, the Duke de Broglie, in the words: "Beware of too much explaining, lest we end by too much excusing."[101] History, ...
— A Lecture on the Study of History • Lord Acton
... pick out a thought there. You know the story Walter 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 ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder
... with his companion of Paris and its excellencies with a skill that soon absorbed all her attention, "Paris, ce magnifique Paris," having almost as much influence on the happiness of the governess, as it was said to have had on that of Madame de Stael, Eve's companion dropped his voice to a tone that was rather confidential for a stranger, although it was ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... Fox, all he knew of love was a description of it he got from the Iliad. That is to say, he was separated from it about three thousand years. This is a trifle too severe, for when twenty-one years of age he met the daughter of Necker at Paris—she who was to give the world of society a thrill as Madame de Stael. And if the gossips are right it was not the fault of Pitt that a love-match did not follow. But the woman gauged the man, and she saw that love to him would be merely an incident, not a consuming passion, and she was not the woman to ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... Rousseau! When an era of military despotism supervened upon the reign of license, how destitute of lettered genius seemed the nation, except when the pensive enthusiasm of Chateaubriand breathed music from American wilds or a London garret, and Madame de Stael gave utterance to her eloquent philosophy in exile at Geneva! "Napoleon eut voulu faire manoeuvrer l'esprit humain comme il faisait manoeuvrer ses vieux bataillons." Yet more emphatic is the reaction of political conditions upon literary development after the Restoration. The tragic ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... 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 think that ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... "having the cardinal points as her sole garment." "Vetu de climat," says Madame de Stael. In Paris nude statues are "draped in cerulean blue." Rabelais (iv.,29) robes King Shrovetide in grey and gold of a comical cut, nothing before, nothing behind, with ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... 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
... a thrilling life—a life of startling dramatic interest—which covered the period occupied by the career of Madame de Stael, even had the person living the life been but an obscure observer of passing events. For the time was big with the most astounding things the world has known in these later centuries. But to a person like the daughter of Necker, with intellect ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... bravery, had been one of the ornaments of the court of Versailles and of the Constituent Assembly. He had been a Knight of Honor of Madame Adelaide, the daughter of Louis XV.; Minister of War under Louis XVI., in 1792; a friend of Madame de Stael; an emigre in England, Switzerland, and Germany; and in 1809, thanks to Napoleon's good-will, he had once more resumed his military career, after an interruption of seventeen years. Towards the end of ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... 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 ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... invent new terms to express His thought; but as He passed the old words through 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 ...
— Some Christian Convictions - A Practical Restatement in Terms of Present-Day Thinking • Henry Sloane Coffin
... residence established his learning on a solid foundation; time was also found for the one love episode of his life—an amour with Suzanne Curchod, an accomplished young lady, who subsequently became the wife of the French minister M. Neckar, and mother of Madame de Stael; shortly after his return to England in 1758 he published in French an Essay on the Study of Literature, and for some time served in the militia; in 1774, having four years previously inherited his father's estate, he entered Parliament, ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... withal, I have understood, of getting to be Foreign Correspondent of the Times Newspaper, and so adding to his income in the mean while. He left Llanblethian in May; dates from Dieppe the 27th of that month. He lived in occasional contact with Parisian notabilities (all of them except Madame de Stael forgotten now), all summer, diligently surveying his ground;—returned for his family, who were still in Wales but ready to move, in the beginning of August; took them immediately across with him; ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... power in the lives of many famous people, intimate with Madame de Stael, Voltaire, Montesquieu, Madame de Choiseul, the Duchess of Luxembourg, Madame Necker, Hume, Madame de Genlis. In her salon old creeds were argued down, new ideas disseminated, and bons mots and witty gossip circulated. She has recounted ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... unloosed his tongue and animated his features. The most striking examples of seraphic joy, of a sort of divine beauty playing upon the features, are among orators. In animated conversation, a person ordinarily homely, like Madame de Stael, becomes beautiful and impressive. But in the pulpit, when the sacred orator is moving a congregation with the fears and hopes of another world, there is a majesty in his beauty which is nowhere else so fully seen. There is no eloquence like that of the pulpit, when ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... resistance. But, when you exalt weakness and imbecility above your heads, give it an imaginary realm of power, illimitable, unmeasured, unrecognized, you have founded a throne for woman on pride, selfishness and complacency, before which you may well stand appalled. In banishing Madame De Stael from Paris, the Emperor Napoleon, even, bowed to the power of that scepter which rules the world of fashion. The most insidious enemy to our republican institutions, at this hour, is found in the aristocracy of ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... Histoire de l'Assemblee Constituante; Alison's History of the French Revolution; Lamartine's History of the Girondists; Lacretelle's History of France; Montigny's Memoires sur Mirabeau; Peuchet's Memoires sur Mirabeau; Madame de Stael's Considerations sur la Revolution Francaise; Macaulay's Essay on Dumont's ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord |
