Margaret Fuller Quotes

154 Sourced Quotes

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

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

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

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

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

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

Margaret Fuller
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.

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

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

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

Margaret Fuller
There is such a rebound from parental influence that it generally seems that the child makes use of the directions given by the parent only to avoid the prescribed path.

Margaret Fuller
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.

Margaret Fuller
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.

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

Margaret Fuller
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.

Margaret Fuller
Tragedy is always a mistake; and the loneliness of the deepest thinker, the widest lover, ceases to be pathetic to us so soon as the sun is high enough above the mountains.

Margaret Fuller
You see how wide the gulf that separates me from the Christian church.

Margaret Fuller
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.

Margaret Fuller
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.

Margaret Fuller
There is some danger lest there be no real religion in the heart which craves too much daily sympathy.

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

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

Margaret Fuller
A man who means to think and write a great deal must, after six and twenty, learn to read with his fingers.

Margaret Fuller
Everywhere the fatal spirit of imitation, of reference to European standards, penetrates and threatens to blight whatever of original growth might adorn the soil.

Margaret Fuller
The man of science dissects the statement, verifies the facts, and demonstrates connection even where he cannot its purpose.

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

Margaret Fuller
The public must learn how to cherish the nobler and rarer plants, and to plant the aloe, able to wait a hundred years for it's bloom, or it's garden will contain, presently, nothing but potatoes and pot-herbs.

Margaret Fuller