Margaret Fuller Quotes

154 Sourced Quotes

A house is no home unless it contains food and fire for the mind as well as the body.

Margaret Fuller
There are two modes of criticism. One which … crushes to earth without mercy all the humble buds of Phantasy, all the plants that, though green and fruitful, are also a prey to insects or have suffered by drouth. It weeds well the garden, and cannot believe the weed in its native soil may be a pretty, graceful plant.
There is another mode which enters into the natural history of every thing that breathes and lives, which believes no impulse to be entirely in vain, which scrutinizes circumstances, motive and object before it condemns, and believes there is a beauty in natural form, if its law and purpose be understood.

Margaret Fuller
The especial genius of Woman I believe to be electrical in movement, intuitive in function, spiritual in tendency.

Margaret Fuller
The persons whom you have idolized can never, in the end, be ungrateful, and, probably, at the time of retreat they still do justice to your heart. But, so long as you must draw persons too near you, a temporary recoil is sure to follow. It is the character striving to defend itself from a heating and suffocating action upon it.

Margaret Fuller
Existence is as deep a verity:
Without the dual, where is unity?
And the "I am"" cannot forbear to be; But from its primal nature forced to frame
Mysteries, destinies of various name,
Is forced to give that it has taught to claim.

Margaret Fuller
Might the simple maxim, that honesty is the best policy be laid to heart! Might a sense of the true aims of life elevate the tone of politics and trade, till public and private honor become identical!

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

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

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

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
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
For precocity some great price is always demanded sooner or later in life.

Margaret Fuller
Two persons love in one another the future good which they aid one another to unfold.

Margaret Fuller
It was not meant that the soul should cultivate the earth, but that the earth should educate and maintain the soul.

Margaret Fuller
I am immortal! I know it! I feel it!
Hope floods my heart with delight!
Running on air mad with life dizzy, reeling,
Upward I mount, — faith is sight, life is feeling,
Hope is the day-star of might!

Margaret Fuller