Mme De Stael Quotes

Apropos of this, I asked my father one day whether it would be possible for me to see Mme. de Stael. My father, mother, and Alphonse all burst out laughing, and Alphonse said: “Where in the world has she sprung from?” To which my father replied: “What fools we are! She springs from the Carmelites.” “My child, Mme. de Stael is dead,” said my mother gently.

By March he was reading—or at least recalling—Mme de Stael’s Germany (1812), that widely read introduction to German thought and culture. Mme de Stael ends her book with three strong chapters on “enthusiasm” which, she said, was the leading, all-important characteristic of the Germans. It was, in her view, the one indispensable key to the subject. What the Germans had taught her, they also taught Thoreau: “Thought is nothing without enthusiasm.”8