Margaret Fuller Quotes

154 Sourced Quotes

This is my tendency; but can I say
That this my thought leads the true, only way?
I only know it constant leads, and I obey.

Margaret Fuller
Who sees the meaning of the flower uprooted in the ploughed field? The ploughman who does not look beyond its boundaries and does not raise his eyes from the ground? No — but the poet who sees that field in its relations with the universe, and looks oftener to the sky than on the ground. Only the dreamer shall understand realities, though, in truth, his dreaming must not be out of proportion to his waking!

Margaret Fuller
Who can ever be alone for a moment in Italy? Every stone has a voice, every grain of dust seems instinct with spirit from the Past, every step recalls some line, some legend of long-neglected lore.

Margaret Fuller
Thoughts which come at a call
Are no better than if they came not at all
Neither flower nor fruit,
Yielding no root
For plant, shrub, or tree.

Margaret Fuller
Safety is not to be secured, then, by the wisest foresight. I shall embark more composedly in our merchant-ship, praying fervently, indeed, that it may not be my lot to lose my boy at sea, either by unsolaced illness, or amid the howling waves; or, if so, that Ossoli, Angelo, and I may go together, and that the anguish may be brief.

Margaret Fuller
If the Negro be a soul, if the woman be a soul, apparelled in flesh, to one master only are they accountable.

Margaret Fuller
Put up at the moment of greatest suffering a prayer, not for thy own escape, but for the enfranchisement of some being dear to thee, and the sovereign spirit will accept thy ransom.

Margaret Fuller
Harmony exists no less in difference than in likeness, if only the same key-note govern both parts. Woman the poem, man the poet; woman the heart, man the head; such divisions are only important when they are never to be transcended. If nature is never bound down, nor the voice of inspiration stifled, that is enough.

Margaret Fuller
Beware the mediocrity that threatens middle age, its limitation of thought and interest, its dullness of fancy, its too external life, and mental thinness.

Margaret Fuller
The highest ideal man can form of his own powers, is that which he is destined to attain. Whatever the soul knows how to seek, it cannot fail to obtain. This is the law and the prophets. Knock and it shall be opened, seek and ye shall find. It is demonstrated; it is a maxim.

Margaret Fuller
Plants of great vigor will almost always struggle into blossom, despite impediments. But there should be encouragement, and a free genial atmosphere for those of more timid sort, fair play for each in its own kind.

Margaret Fuller
I am tired of keeping myself up in the water without corks, and without strength to swim. I should like to go to sleep, and be born again.

Margaret Fuller
Chance cannot touch me! Time cannot hush me!
Fear, Hope, and Longing, at strife,
Sink as I rise, on, on, upward forever,
Gathering strength, gaining breath, — naught can sever
Me from the Spirit of Life!

Margaret Fuller
I long so much to see you! Should anything hinder our meeting upon earth, think of your daughter, as one who always wished, at least, to do her duty, and who always cherished you, according as her mind opened to discover excellence. … I hope we shall be able to pass some time together yet, in this world. But, if God decrees otherwise, — here and HEREAFTER, — my dearest mother, "Your loving child, MARGARET."

Margaret Fuller
Men disappoint me so, I disappoint myself so, yet courage, patience, shuffle the cards...

Margaret Fuller
I now know all the people worth knowing in America, and I find no intellect comparable to my own.

Margaret Fuller
Wouldst have the princely spirit bowed?
Whisper only, speak not loud,
Mark and leave him in the crowd. Thou need'st not spies nor jailers have;
The free will serve thee like the slave,
Coward shrinking from the brave.

Margaret Fuller
The shrine is vowed to freedom, but, my friend,
Freedom is but a means to gain an end.
Freedom should build the temple, but the shrine
Be consecrate to thought still more divine.
The human bliss which angel hopes foresaw
Is liberty to comprehend the law.
Give, then, thy book a larger scope and frame,
Comprising means and end in Truth's great name.

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

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

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

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
I fear I have not one good word to say this fair morning, though the sun shines so encouragingly on the distant hills and gentle river and the trees are in their festive hues. I am not festive, though contented. When obliged to give myself to the prose of life, as I am on this occasion of being established in a new home I like to do the thing, wholly and quite, - to weave my web for the day solely from the grey yarn.

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

Margaret Fuller