Margaret Fuller Quotes

I fear I have not one good word to say this fair morning, though the sun shines so encouragingly on the distant hills and gentle river and the trees are in their festive hues. I am not festive, though contented. When obliged to give myself to the prose of life, as I am on this occasion of being established in a new home I like to do the thing, wholly and quite, - to weave my web for the day solely from the grey yarn.

Art can only be truly art by presenting an adequate outward symbol of some fact in the interior life.

Truth is the first of jewels.

How anyone can remain a Catholic - I mean who has ever been aroused to think, and is not biased by the partialities of childish years - after seeing Catholicism here in Italy I cannot conceive.

Who does not observe the immediate glow and security that is diffused over the life of woman, before restless or fretful, by engaging in gardening, building, or the lowest department of art? Here is something that is not routine
something that draws forth life towards the infinite.

Let every woman, who has once begun to think, examine herself

Beings, likely to be left alone, need to be fortified and furnished within themselves, and educationand thought have tended more and more to regard these beings as related to absolute being ...

Put up at the moment of greatest suffering a prayer, not for thy own escape, but for the enfranchisement of some being dear to thee, and the sovereign spirit will accept thy ransom.

Man is not made for society, but society is made for man. No institution can be good which does not tend to improve the individual.

Most marvelous and enviable is that fecundity of fancy which can adorn whatever it touches, which can invest naked fact and dry reasoning with unlooked-for beauty, make flowers bloom even on the brow of the precipice, and, when nothing better can be had, can turn the very substance of rock itself into moss and lichens. This faculty is uncomparingly the most important for the vivid and attractive exhibition of truth to the minds of men.

The use of criticism, in periodical writing, is to sift, not to stamp a work.

There is no wholly masculine man, no purely feminine woman.

Man can never come up to his ideal standard. It is the nature of the immortal spirit to raise that standard higher and higher as it goes from strength to strength, still upward and onward. The wisest and greatest men are ever the most modest.

Amid all your duties, keep some hours to yourself.

The civilized man is a larger mind but a more imperfect nature than the savage.

Artists are always young.

In order that she may be able to give her hand with dignity, she must be able to stand alone.

Every fact is impure, but every fact contains in it the juices of life. Every fact is a clod, from which may grow an amaranth or a palm.

The Arabian horse will not plough well, nor can the plough-horse be rode to play the jereed.

Beware of over-great pleasure in being popular or even beloved. As far as an amiable disposition and powers of entertainment make you so, it is a happiness; but if there is one grain of plausibility, it is poison.

The highest ideal man can form of his own powers, is that which he is destined to attain. Whatever the soul knows how to seek, it cannot fail to obtain. This is the law and the prophets. Knock and it shall be opened, seek and ye shall find. It is demonstrated; it is a maxim.

But her eye, that torch or the soul, is untamed, and in the intensity of her reading, we see a soul invincibly young in faith and hope.

All great expression, which on a superficial survey seems so easy as well as so simple, furnishes after a while, to the faithful observer, its own standard by which to appreciate it.

How many persons must there be who cannot worship alone since they are content with so little.

Preparations are good in life, prologues ruinous.

No temple can still the personal griefs and strifes in the breasts of its visitors.

Marriage is the natural means of forming a sphere, of taking root on the earth: it requires strength to do this without such an opening, very many have failed to this, and their imperfections have been in every one's way.

Two persons love in one another the future good which they aid one another to unfold.

A great work of Art demands a great thought or a thought of beauty adequately expressed. - Neither in Art nor Literature more than in Life can an ordinary thought be made interesting because well-dressed.

Whatever the soul knows how to seek, it cannot fail to obtain.

Beware the mediocrity that threatens middle age, its limitation of thought and interest, its dullness of fancy, its too external life, and mental thinness.

Nature provides exceptions to every rule.

Today is a reader; Tomorrow is a leader

Pain has no effect but to steal some of my time.

I should never stand alone in this desert world, but that manna would drop from heaven, if I would but rise with every rising sun to gather it.

We have waited here long in the dust; we are tired and hungry; but the triumphal procession must appear at last.

Woman is born for love, and it is impossible to turn her from seeking it.

It should be remarked that, as the principle of liberty is better understood, and more nobly interpreted, a broader protest is made in behalf of women. As men become aware that few have had a fair chance, they are inclined to say that no women have had a fair chance.

I now know all the people worth knowing in America and I find no intellect comparable to my own.

Genius will live and thrive without training, but it does not the less reward the watering pot and the pruning knife.

Nature seems to have poured forth her riches so without calculation, merely to mark the fullness of her joy.

It is astonishing what force, purity, and wisdom it requires for a human being to keep clear of falsehoods.

The Greeks saw everything in forms which we are trying to ascertain as law, and classify as cause.

The especial genius of women I believe to be electrical in movement, intuitive in function, spiritual in tendency.

Tremble not before the free man, but before the slave who has chains to break.

Spirits that have once been sincerely united and tended together a sacred flame, never become entirely stranger to one another's life.

For precocity some great price is always demanded sooner or later in life.

Reverence the highest, have patience with the lowest. Let this day's performance of the meanest duty be thy religion. Are the stars too distant, pick up the pebble that lies at thy feet, and from it learn the all.

We cannot have expression till there is something to be expressed.

Very early, I knew that the only object in life was to grow.

Who can ever be alone for a moment in Italy? Every stone has a voice, every grain of dust seems instinct with spirit from the Past, every step recalls some line, some legend of long-neglected lore.

The critic is beneath the maker, but is his needed friend. The critic is not a base caviler, but the younger brother of genius. Next to invention is the power of interpreting invention; next to beauty the power of appreciating beauty. And of making others appreciate it ...

Drudgery is as necessary to call out the treasures of the mind, as harrowing and planting those of the earth.

Yet, by men in this country, as by the Jews, when Moses was leading them to the promised land, everything has been done that inherited depravity could do, to hinder the promise of Heaven from its fulfilment. The cross, here as elsewhere, has been planted only to be blasphemed by cruelty and fraud.

We need to hear the excuses men make to themselves for their worthlessness.

If anything can be invented more excruciating than an English Opera, such as was the fashion at the time I was in London, I am sure no sin of mine deserves the punishment of bearing it.

Only the dreamer shall understand realities, though in truth his dreaming must be not out of proportion to his waking.

With the intellect, I always have-always shall overcome, but that is not half of the work of life. The life-oh my God-shall the life never be sweet?

But the golden-rod is one of the fairy, magical flowers; it grows not up to seek human love amid the light of day, but to mark to the discerning what wealth lies hid in the secret caves of earth.

I am 'too fiery' ... yet I wish to be seen as I am and I would lose all rather than soften away anything.

Some degree of expression is necessary for growth, but it should be little in proportion to the full life.

It is not because the touch of genius has roused genius to production, but because the admiration of genius has made talent ambitious, that the harvest is still so abundant.

What I mean by the Muse is that unimpeded clearness of the intuitive powers, which a perfectly truthful adherence to every admonition of the higher instincts would bring to a finely organized human being. It may appear as prophesy or as poesy ... should these faculties have free play, I believe they will open up new, deeper and purer sources of joyous inspiration than have as yet refreshed the earth.

All greatness affects different minds, each in its own particular kind, and the variations of testimony mark the truth of feeling.

At Chicago I read again 'Philip Van Artevelde,' and certain passages in it will always be in my mind associated with the deep sound of the lake, as heard in the night. I used to read a short time at night, and then open the blind to look out. The moon would be full upon the lake, and the calm breath, pure light, and the deep voice, harmonized well with the thought of the Flemish hero. When will this country have such a man ? It is what she needs - no thin Idealist, no coarse Realist, but a man whose eye reads the heavens while his feet step firmly on the ground and his hands are strong and dextrous in the use of human instruments. A man, religious, virtuous and - sagacious; a man of universal sympathies, but self-possessed; a man who knows the region of emotion, though he is not its slave; a man to whom this world is no mere spectacle or fleeting shadow, but a great, solemn game, to be played with good heed, for its stakes are of eternal value, yet who, if his own play be true, heeds not what he loses by the falsehood of others. A man who lives from the past, yet knows that its honey can but moderately avail him; whose comprehensive eye scans the present, neither infatuated by its golden lures nor chilled by its many ventures; who possesses prescience, as the wise man must, but not so far as to be driven mad to-day by the gift which discerns to-morrow. When there is such a man for America, the thought which urges her on will be expressed.

The soul of the great musician can only be expressed in music.

It was not meant that the soul should cultivate the earth, but that the earth should educate and maintain the soul.

There are noble books but one wants the breath of life sometimes.

To one who has enjoyed the full life of any scene, of any hour, what thoughts can be recorded about it seem like the commas and semicolons in the paragraph-mere stops.

Be what you would seem to be.

Accursed be he who willingly saddens an immortal spirit---doomed to infamy in later, wiser ages, doomed in future stages of his own being to deadly penance, only short of death.

The mind is not, I know, a highway, but a temple, and its doors should not be carelessly left open.

...above all things; to remember that hypocrisy is the most hopeless as well as the meanest of crimes...

The character and history of each child may be a new and poetic experience to the parent, if he will let it.

When the intellect and affections are in harmony; when intellectual consciousness is calm and deep; inspiration will not be confounded with fancy.

But the intellect, cold, is ever more masculine than feminine; warmed by emotion, it rushes towards mother earth, and puts on the forms of beauty.

Men for the sake of getting a living forget to live.

It seems that it is madder never to abandon one's self than often to be infatuated; better to be wounded, a captive and a slave, than always to walk in armor.

A house is no home unless it contain food and fire for the mind as well as for the body.

This is the method of genius, to ripen fruit for the crowd by those rays of whose heat they complain.

The only woman to whom it has been given to touch what is decisive in the present world and to have a presentiment of the world of the future.

I stand in the sunny noon of life. Objects no longer glitter in the dews of morning, neither are yet softened by the shadows of evening.