Top 129 Quotes & Sayings by Margaret Fuller

Very early, I knew that the only object in life was to grow.

I am suffocated and lost when I have not the bright feeling of progression.

If you have knowledge, let others light their candles in it.

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.

It is astonishing what force, purity, and wisdom it requires for a human being to keep clear of falsehoods.

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

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

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

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

Nature provides exceptions to every rule.

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

Drudgery is as necessary to call out the treasures of the mind, as harrowing and planting those of the earth.

It is a vulgar error that love, a love, to woman is her whole existence; she is born for Truth and Love in their universal energy.

The character and history of each child may be a new and poetic experience to the parent, if he will let it.

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

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

Be what you would seem to be - or, if you'd like it put more simply - a house is no home unless it contains food and fire for the mind as well as the body.

Today a reader, tomorrow a leader.

Man tells his aspiration in his God; but in his demon he shows his depth of experience.

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

It should be remarked that, as the principle of liberty is better understood, and more nobly interpreted, a broader protest is made in behalf of women. As men become aware that few have had a fair chance, they are inclined to say that no women have had a fair chance.

The use of criticism, in periodical writing, is to sift, not to stamp a work.

Only the dreamer shall understand realities, though in truth his dreaming must be not out of proportion to his waking.

Men for the sake of getting a living forget to live.

It seems that it is madder never to abandon one's self than often to be infatuated; better to be wounded, a captive and a slave, than always to walk in armor.

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

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.

Artists are always young.

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

Give me truth; cheat me by no illusion.

The life of the soul is incalculable.

A house is no home unless it contains food and fire for the mind as well as for the body. For human beings are not so constituted that they can live without expansion. If they do not get it in one way, they must in another, or perish.

Amid all your duties, keep some hours to yourself.

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.

Tremble not before the free man, but before the slave who has chains to break.

Truth is the first of jewels.

There is no wholly masculine man, no purely feminine woman.

Wine is earth's answer to the sun.

Harmony exists no less in difference than in likeness, if only the same key-note govern both parts.

Pain has no effect but to steal some of my time.

I have urged on woman independence of man, not that I do not think the sexes mutually needed by one another, but because in woman this fact has led to an excessive devotion, which has cooled love, degraded marriage and prevented it her sex from being what it should be to itself or the other. I wish woman to live, first for God's sake. Then she will not take what is not fit for her from a sense of weakness and poverty. Then if she finds what she needs in man embodied, she will know how to love and be worthy of being loved.

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.

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

The critic is beneath the maker, but is his needed friend. The critic is not a base caviler, but the younger brother of genius. Next to invention is the power of interpreting invention; next to beauty the power of appreciating beauty. And of making others appreciate it.

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

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

Life is richly worth living, with its continual revelations of mighty woe, yet infinite hope; and I take it to my breast.

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

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

What concerns me now is that my life be a beautiful, powerful, in a word, a complete life of its kind.

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

Whatever the soul knows how to seek, it cannot fail to obtain.

It is so true that a woman may be in love with a woman, and a man with a man. It is pleasant to be sure of it, because it is undoubtedly the same love that we shall feel when we are angels.

I am 'too fiery'... yet I wish to be seen as I am and I would lose all rather than soften away anything.

Truth is the nursing mother of genius.

Be what you would seem to be.

All around us lies what we neither understand nor use. Our capacities, our instincts for this our present sphere are but half developed. Let us confine ourselves to that till the lesson be learned; let us be completely natural; before we trouble ourselves with the supernatural. I never see any of these things but I long to get away and lie under a green tree and let the wind blow on me. There is marvel and charm enough in that for me.

We would have every arbitrary barrier thrown down. We would have every path laid open to woman as freely as to man.

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

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.