Lady Mary Wortley Montagu Quotes

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I believe more follies are committed out of complaisance to the world, than in following our own inclinations — Nature is seldom in the wrong, custom always...

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
A propos of Distempers, I am going to tell you a thing that I am sure will make you wish your selfe here. The Small Pox so fatal and so general amongst us is here entirely harmless by the invention of engrafting (which is the term they give it). There is a set of old Women who make it their business to perform the Operation.

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
A soldier worthy of the name he bears,
As brave and senseless as the sword he wears.

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
Miserable is the fate of writers: if they are agreeable, they are offensive; and if dull, they starve.

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
People never write calmly but when they write indifferently.

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
Thine is an oyster knife that hacks and hews —
The rage but not the talent to abuse.

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
There is no remedy so easy as books, which if they do not give cheerfulness, at least restore quiet to the most troubled mind.

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
Nobody should trust their virtue with necessity, the force of which is never known till it is felt, and it is therefore one of the first duties to avoid the temptation of it.

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
We are no more free agents than the queen of clubs when she victoriously takes prisoner the knave of hearts.

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
My chief study all my life has been to lighten misfortunes and multiply pleasures, as far as human nature can.

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
People wish their enemies dead—but I do not; I say give them the gout, give them the stone!

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
I give my selfe sometimes admirable advice but I am incapable of taking it.

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
And we meet, with champagne and a chicken,
at last.

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
Gardening is certainly the next amusement to reading.

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
I have never in all my various travels seen but two sorts of people, and those very like one another; I mean men and women, who always have been and ever will be the same.

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
I am in perfect health, and hear it said I look better than ever I did in my life, which is one of those lies one is always glad to hear.

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
But the fruit that can fall without shaking
Indeed is too mellow for me.

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu