Margaret Fuller Quotes

If you have knowledge, let others light their candles in it.

Today a reader, tomorrow a leader.

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

Nature provides exceptions to every rule.

I am suffocated and lost when I have not the bright feeling of progression.

We would have every arbitrary barrier thrown down. We would have every path laid open to woman as freely as to man.

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

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.

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

I have urged on woman independence of man, not that I do not think the sexes mutually needed by one another, but because in woman this fact has led to an excessive devotion, which has cooled love, degraded marriage and prevented it her sex from being what it should be to itself or the other. I wish woman to live, first for God's sake. Then she will not take what is not fit for her from a sense of weakness and poverty. Then if she finds what she needs in man embodied, she will know how to love and be worthy of being loved.

It is so true that a woman may be in love with a woman, and a man with a man. It is pleasant to be sure of it, because it is undoubtedly the same love that we shall feel when we are angels.

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

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

Wine is earth's answer to the sun.

Amid all your duties, keep some hours to yourself.

There exists in the minds of men a tone of feeling toward women as toward slaves.

Truth is the first of jewels.

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

All around us lies what we neither understand nor use. Our capacities, our instincts for this our present sphere are but half developed. Let us confine ourselves to that till the lesson be learned; let us be completely natural; before we trouble ourselves with the supernatural. I never see any of these things but I long to get away and lie under a green tree and let the wind blow on me. There is marvel and charm enough in that for me.

Male and female represent the two sides of the great radical dualism. But in fact they are perpetually passing into one another. Fluid hardens to solid, solid rushes to fluid. There is no wholly masculine man, no purely feminine woman.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

Would that the simple maxim, that honesty is the best policy, might be laid to heart; that a sense of the true aim of life might elevate the tone of politics and trade till public and private honor become identical.

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

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

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

Man tells his aspiration in his God; but in his demon he shows his depth of experience.

Harmony exists no less in difference than in likeness, if only the same key-note govern both parts.

I accept the universe!

Artists are always young.

It is a vulgar error that love, a love, to woman is her whole existence; she is born for Truth and Love in their universal energy

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

Beware of over-great pleasure in being popular or even beloved.

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

While any one is base, none can be entirely free and noble.

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

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

What a difference it makes to come home to a child!

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.

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.

Our friends should be our incentives to right, but not only our guiding, but our prophetic, stars. To love by right is much, to love by faith is more; both are the entire love, without which heart, mind, and soul cannot be alike satisfied. We love and ought to love one another, not merely for the absolute worth of each, but on account of a mutual fitness of temporary character.

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

The critic ... should be not merely a poet, not merely a philosopher, not merely an observer, but tempered of all three.

What concerns me now is that my life be a beautiful, powerful, in a word, a complete life of its kind.

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