Madame de Stäel Quotes

“Long before George Orwell, she understood how language could be perverted for political aims; how noble motives could be ascribed, post hoc, to ignoble actions. ‘When . . . they had wanted to sanction every crime, they called the Government the Committee of Public Safety; thereby proclaiming the well-known maxim, that the security of the people is the supreme law. The supreme law is justice.’ And ‘those guilty of doing harm in every period, have tried to attribute some generous pretext to themselves to excuse their actions; there are almost no crimes in existence which their perpetrators have not attributed to honour, religion or liberty.”
― Maria Fairweather, Madame de Stael

“Madame de Staël understood literature to include philosophy, history, social and political writing.”
― Maria Fairweather, Madame de Stael

“Madame de Staël herself explained the mainspring of her character with the simple words: ‘My passion is my genius’. Just before her death, almost as if writing her own epitaph, she said to Chateaubriand: ‘I have always been the same; lively and sad. I have loved God, my father and liberty.”
― Maria Fairweather, Madame de Stael

“I am too honest to pretend to feelings I don’t have. I am happy when I make you happy and when you do not trouble my happiness.”
― Maria Fairweather, Madame de Stael