Anne-Louise-Germaine de Staël

“Sensibility, imagination, reason, each is subservient to the other. Every one of these faculties would be nothing but a disease, but weakness, instead of strength, if it were not modified or completed by the collective character of our nature.”

“When we accustom ourselves to see animals suffer, we in time overcome the natural repugnancy of the sense of anguish, we become less accessible to pity even for our·fellow creatures, or at least we feel no longer those involuntary impressions.”

“Enlightening, teaching, and perfecting women together with men on the national and individual level: this must be the secret for the achievement of every reasonable goal, as well as the establishment of any permanent social or political relationships.”

“A wellborn soul is guided by only one principle in the world: always do good to others and never harm”

“... the reciprocal obligation from man to man holds the first rank; what regards ourselves, ought to be considered relatively to the influence that we may possess over the destiny of others...”

“We live in an age when selfinterest alone seems to determine all of man’s acts—and what empathy, what emotion, what enthusiasm can ever grow out of self interest. It is pleasanter to dream of those times of dedication, sacrifice, and heroism that used to be, and that have left honorable traces upon the earth.”

“Virtue . . . is nearly connected with the heart: I have called it Beneficence; not in the very limited sense that is generally given to the term, but to specify thereby all the actions that emanate from active goodness.”

“Morality and freedom are as certainly the only bases of the happiness and dignity of the human race as the system of Galileo is the true theory of the celestial motions.”

“Nothing is less applicable to life than a mathematical argument. A proposition expressed in numbers is definitely false or true. In all other relations, the truth is so mingled with the false that often only instinct can help us to decide among virtuous influences, sometimes equally as strong in one direction as in the other.”

“The human mind is always making progress, but it is a progress in spirals.”