“Genius is essentially creative; it bears the stamp of the individual who possesses it.”

— Madame de Staël, Corinne (1807), Bk. 7, ch. 1

About Madame de Staël

1766 – 1817

French-Swiss writer and salon hostess, author of "Corinne".

“To understand makes one very indulgent.”

“We cease loving ourselves if no one loves us.”

“Love is the whole history of a woman's life; it is an episode in a man's.”

“Any one thing in the creation is sufficient to demonstrate a Providence to an humble and grateful mind.”

“If music be the food of love, play on.”

“Beauty is the mark God sets upon virtue.”

“If eyes were made for seeing, then beauty is its own excuse for being.”

“The chief forms of beauty are order and symmetry and definiteness.”

“Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular.”