Margaret Fuller - Thought Quotes

14 Sourced Quotes

View all Margaret Fuller Quotes
We deemed the secret lost, the spirit gone,
Which spake in Greek simplicity of thought,
And in the forms of gods and heroes wrought
Eternal beauty from the sculptured stone —
A higher charm than modern culture won,
With all the wealth of metaphysic lore,
Gifted to analyze, dissect explore.

Margaret Fuller
A great work of Art demands a great thought, or a thought of beauty adequately expressed. Neither in Art nor literature more than in life can an ordinary thought be made interesting because well dressed.

Margaret Fuller
I feel perfectly willing to stay my threescore years and ten, if it be thought I need so much tuition from this planet; but it seems to me that my future upon earth will soon close. It may be terribly trying, but it will not be so very long, now. God will transplant the root, if he wills to rear it into fruit-bearing.

Margaret Fuller
It does not follow because many books are written by persons born in America that there exists an American literature. Books which imitate or represent the thoughts and life of Europe do not constitute an American literature. Before such can exist, an original idea must animate this nation and fresh currents of life must call into life fresh thoughts along its shores.

Margaret Fuller
A single thought transfuses every form;
The sunny day is changed into the storm,
For light is dark, hard soft, and cold is warm. One presence fill and floods the whole serene;
Nothing can be, nothing has ever been,
Except the one truth that creates the scene.

Margaret Fuller
The position I early was enabled to take was one of self-reliance. And were all women as sure of their wants as I was, the result would be the same. But they are so overloaded with precepts and guardians who think that nothing is so much to be dreaded for a woman as originality of thought or character, that their minds are impeded with doubts till they lose their chance of fair, free proportions. The difficulty is to get them to the point from which they shall naturally develop self-respect, and learn self-help.

Margaret Fuller
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
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
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 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
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
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
The day wears heavily, — why, then, ignore it;
Peace is the soul's desire, — such thoughts restore it;
The truth thou art, — it needs not implore it.

Margaret Fuller