Margaret Fuller - Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845)

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

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

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

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

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

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

Margaret Fuller
Let every woman, who has once begun to think, examine herself

Margaret Fuller
These were American ladies, i.e., they were of that class who have wealth and leisure to make full use of the day, and confer benefits on others.

Margaret Fuller
What Woman needs is not as a woman to act or rule, but as a nature to grow, as an intellect to discern, as a soul to live freely and unimpeded.

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

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

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

Margaret Fuller
I stand in the sunny noon of life. Objects no longer glitter in the dews of morning, neither are yet softened by the shadows of evening. Every spot is seen, every chasm revealed.

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
Male and female represent the two sides of the great radical dualism. But, in fact, they are perpetually passing into one another. Fluid hardens to solid, solid rushes to fluid. There is no wholly masculine man, no purely feminine woman.
History jeers at the attempts of physiologists to bind great original laws by the forms which flow from them. They make a rule; they say from observation what can and cannot be. In vain! Nature provides exceptions to every rule. She sends women to battle, and sets Hercules spinning; she enables women to bear immense burdens, cold, and frost; she enables the man, who feels maternal love, to nourish his infant like a mother.

Margaret Fuller
As men become aware that few have had a fair chance, they are inclined to say that no woman has had a fair chance.

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
What I mean by the Muse is that unimpeded clearness of the intuitive powers, which a perfectly truthful adherence to every admonition of the higher instincts would bring to a finely organized human being. It may appear as prophecy or as poesy. … and should these faculties have free play, I believe they will open new, deeper and purer sources of joyous inspiration than have as yet refreshed the earth.
Let us be wise, and not impede the soul. Let her work as she will. Let us have one creative energy, one incessant revelation. Let it take what form it will, and let us not bind it by the past to man or woman, black or white.

Margaret Fuller
We would have every arbitrary barrier thrown down. We would have every path laid open to Woman as freely as to Man. Were this done, and a slight temporary fermentation allowed to subside, we should see crystallizations more pure and of more various beauty. We believe the divine energy would pervade nature to a degree unknown in the history of former ages, and that no discordant collision, but a ravishing harmony of the spheres, would ensue.
Yet, then and only then will mankind be ripe for this, when inward and outward freedom for Woman as much as for Man shall be acknowledged as a right, not yielded as a concession.

Margaret Fuller
Let it not be said, wherever there is energy or creative genius, 'She has a masculine mind.'
This by no means argues a willing want of generosity toward Woman. Man is as generous towards her as he knows how to be. Wherever she has herself arisen in national or private history, and nobly shone forth in any form of excellence, men have received her, not only willingly, but with triumph.

Margaret Fuller