Lady Mary Wortley Montagu Quotes

77 Sourced Quotes

I don't say 'Tis impossible for an impudent man not to rise in the world, but a moderate merit with a large share of impudence is more probable to be advanced than the greatest qualifications without it.

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
A man that is ashamed of passions that are natural and reasonable, is generally proud of those that are shameful and silly.

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
Nobody can deny but religion is a comfort to the distressed, a cordial to the sick, and sometimes a restraint on the wicked...

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
I hate the noise and hurry inseparable from great Estates and Titles, and look upon both as blessings that ought only to be given to fools, for 'Tis only to them that they are blessings.

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
In short I will part with anything for you but you.

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
Whoever will cultivate their own mind will find full employment. Every virtue does not only require great care in the planting, but as much daily solicitude in cherishing as exotic fruits and flowers; the vices and passions (which I am afraid are the natural product of the soil) demand perpetual weeding. Add to this the search after knowledge... and the longest life is too short.

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
No entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor any pleasure so lasting.

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
I have never, in all my various travels, seen but two sorts of people I mean men and women, who always have been, and ever will be, the same. The same vices and the same follies have been the fruit of all ages, though sometimes under different names.

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
How many thousands... earnestly seeking what they do not want, while they neglect the real blessings in their possession -- I mean the innocent gratification of their senses, which is all we can properly call our own.

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
I am patriot enough to take pains to bring this usefull invention into fashion in England, and I should not fail to write to some of our Doctors very particularly about it, if I knew anyone of 'em that I thought had Virtue enough to destroy such a considerable branch of Revenue for the good of Mankind, but that Distemper is too beneficial to them not to expose to all their Resentment the hardy wight that should undertake to put an end to it.

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
It was formerly a terrifying view to me that I should one day be an old woman. I now find that Nature has provided pleasures for every state.

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
My dear Smollett... disgraces his talent by writing those stupid romances called history.

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
If it were the fashion to go naked, the face would be hardly observed.

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
I have all my life been on my guard against the information conveyed by the sense of hearing -- it being one of my earliest observations, the universal inclination of humankind is to be led by the ears, and I am sometimes apt to imagine that they are given to men as they are to pitchers, purposely that they may be carried about by them.

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
I have never had any great esteem for the generality of the fair sex, and my only consolation for being of that gender has been the assurance it gave me of never being married to any one among them.

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
Strictly speaking, there is but one real evil: I mean acute pain. All other complaints are so considerably diminished by time that it is plain the grief is owing to our passion, since the sensation of it vanishes when that is over.

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
A woman, till five-and-thirty, is only looked upon as a raw girl, and can possibly make no noise in the world till about forty.

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
There can be no situation in life in which the conversation of my dear sister will not administer some comfort to me.

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
Time has the same effect on the mind as on the face; the predominant passion and the strongest feature become more conspicuous from the others retiring.

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
If twas the fashion to go naked, the face would be hardly observ'd.

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
The knowledge of numbers is one of the chief distinctions between us and the brutes.

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
I have too much indulged my sedentary humour and have been a rake in reading.
Letter to her daughter Lady Bute, 11 April 1759

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
See how that pair of billing doves With open murmurs own their loves And, heedless of censorious eyes, Pursue their unpolluted joys: No fears of future want molest The downy quiet of their nest.

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
Making verses is almost as common as taking snuff, and God can tell what miserable stuff people carry about in their pockets, and offer to all their acquaintances, and you know one cannot refuse reading and taking a pinch.

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
As the world is, and will be, 'tis a sort of duty to be rich, that it may be in in one's power to do good...

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
I am afraid we are little better than straws upon the water; we may flatter ourselves that we swim, when the current carries us along.

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
I'm glad you'll write,
You'll furnish paper when I shite.

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
Let this great maxim be my virtue's guide:
In part she is to blame, who has been tried,
He comes too near, that comes to be denied.

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
The ultimate end of your education was to make you a good wife.

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
True knowledge consists in knowing things, not words.

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu