“Superstition attaches to this life, and religion to the next; superstition is allied to fatality, and religion to virtue; it is from the vivacity of earthly desires that we become superstitious, and it is, on the contrary, by the sacrifice of these same desires that we are religious.”

—  Anne Louise Germaine de Staël

Ten Years' Exile (Dix années d'exil, written 1810–1813, posthumously published 1821), ch. 16

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Anne Louise Germaine de Staël 42
Swiss author 1766–1817

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