Margaret Fuller Quotes

154 Sourced Quotes

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

Margaret Fuller
To me, our destinies seem flower and fruit
Born of an ever-generating root...

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

Margaret Fuller
Man tells his aspiration in his God; but in his demon he shows his depth of experience; and casts light into the cavern through which he worked his cause up to the cheerful day.

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

Margaret Fuller
The Power who gave a power, by its mere existence, signifies that it must be brought out towards perfection.

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

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

Margaret Fuller
Life-flow of my natal hour, I will not weary of thy power,
Till in the changes of thy sound
A chord's three parts distinct are found.
I will faithful move with thee,
God-ordered, self-fed energy,
Nature in eternity.

Margaret Fuller
I only know one prayer — "Give me the truth,
Give me that colored whiteness, ancient youth,
Complex and simple, seen in joy and ruth. Let me not by vain wishes bar my claim,
Nor soothe my hunger by an empty name,
Nor crucify the Son of man by hasty blame. But in the earth and fire, water and air,
Live earnestly by turns without despair,
Nor seek a home till home be every where!"

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

Margaret Fuller
We doubt not the destiny of our country — that she is to accomplish great things for human nature, and be the mother of a nobler race than the world has yet known. But she has been so false to the scheme made out at her nativity, that it is now hard to say which way that destiny points.

Margaret Fuller
Not one man, in the million, shall I say? no, not in the hundred million, can rise above the belief that woman was made for man.

Margaret Fuller
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.

Margaret Fuller
Perhaps it is a weakness to confide to you embryo designs, which never may glow into life, or mock me by their failure.

Margaret Fuller
You ask a faith, — they are content with faith;
You ask to have, — but they reply "IT hath."
There is no end, there need be no path.

Margaret Fuller
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.

Margaret Fuller
I am absurdly fearful, and various omens have combined to give me a dark feeling. I am become indeed a miserable coward, for the sake of Angelino. I fear heat and cold, fear the voyage, fear biting poverty. I hope I shall not be forced to be as brave for him, as I have been for myself, and that, if I succeed to rear him, he will be neither a weak nor a bad man. But I love him too much! In case of mishap, however, I shall perish with my husband and my child, and we may be transferred to some happier state.

Margaret Fuller
There are who separate the eternal light
In forms of man and woman, day and night;
They cannot bear that God be essence quite.

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

Margaret Fuller
The pencil moved prophetic: together now men read
In the fair book of nature, and find the hope they need.
The wreath woven by the river is by the seaside worn,
And one of fate's best arrows to its due mark is borne.

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

Margaret Fuller
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.

Margaret Fuller
Essays, entitled critical, are epistles addressed to the public, through which the mind of the recluse relieves itself of its impressions.

Margaret Fuller
If any individual live too much in relations, so that he becomes a stranger to the resources of his own nature, he falls, after a while, into a distraction, or imbecility, from which he can only be cured by a time of isolation, which gives the renovating fountains time to rise up.

Margaret Fuller
We will worship by impromptu symbols, till the religion is framed for all Humanity. The beauty grows around us daily, the trees are now all in blossom and some of the vines; there is a Crown Imperial just in perfection, to which I paid my evening worship by the light of the fire, which reached to us, and there are flashes of lightening too. But I do not like the lightening so well as once, having been in too great danger. Yet just now a noble flash falls upon my paper, it ought to have noble thoughts to illumine, instead of these little nothings, but indeed to-night I write only to say: thou dear, dear friend, and we must must meet soon.

Margaret Fuller
Every relation, every gradation of nature is incalculably precious, but only to the soul which is poised upon itself, and to whom no loss, no change, can bring dull discord, for it is in harmony with the central soul.
If any individual live too much in relations, so that he becomes a stranger to the resources of his own nature, he falls, after a while, into a distraction, or imbecility, from which he can only becured by a time of isolation, which gives the renovating fountains time to rise up. With a society it is the same.

Margaret Fuller
New minds have come to reveal themselves to me, though I do not wish it, for I feel myself inadequate to the ties already formed. I have not strength or time to do anything as I would, or meet the thoughts of those I love already. But these new have come with gifts too fair to be refused and which have cheered my passive mind.

Margaret Fuller
Truth is the nursing mother of genius. No man can be absolutely true to himself, eschewing cant, compromise, servile imitation, and complaisance without becoming original.

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

Margaret Fuller