“Union is only possible to those who are units. To be fit for relations in time, souls, whether of man or woman, must be able to do without them in the spirit.”
Source: Woman in the Nineteenth Century
“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.”
Source: At home and abroad
“As to marriage, I think the intercourse of heart and mind may be fully enjoyed without entering into this partnership of daily life.”
Source: The Woman and the Myth: Margaret Fuller's Life and Writings
“Beware the mediocrity that threatens middle age, its limitation of thought and interest, its dullness of fancy, its too external life, and mental thinness.”
“The mind is not, I know, a highway, but a temple, and its doors should not be carelessly left open.”
Source: Woman in the 19th century, and kindred papers relating to the sphere, condition, and duties of woman
“If anything can be invented more excruciating than an English Opera, such as was the fashion at the time I was in London, I am sure no sin of mine deserves the punishment of bearing it.”
Source: Woman in the 19th century, and kindred papers relating to the sphere, condition, and duties of woman
“Pain has no effect but to steal some of my time.”
Source: Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli
“How anyone can remain a Catholic - I mean who has ever been aroused to think, and is not biased by the partialities of childish years - after seeing Catholicism here in Italy I cannot conceive.”
“Those have not lived who have not seen Rome.”
Source: Woman in the 19th century, and kindred papers relating to the sphere, condition, and duties of woman
“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.”
Source: Woman in the Ninteenth Century (Volume 2 of 2) (EasyRead Super Large 20pt Edition)
“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.”
Source: Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli
“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.”
Source: Woman in the Nineteenth Century
“The life of the soul is incalculable.”
Source: The Letters of Margaret Fuller: 1848-49
“Truth is the first of jewels.”
Source: My Heart is a Large Kingdom: Selected Letters of Margaret Fuller
“Give me truth; cheat me by no illusion.”
Source: Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli
“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.”
Source: Woman in the Nineteenth Century
“Some degree of expression is necessary for growth, but it should be little in proportion to the full life.”
Source: The letters of Margaret Fuller
“Life is richly worth living, with its continual revelations of mighty woe, yet infinite hope; and I take it to my breast.”
Source: Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli
“Everywhere the fatal spirit of imitation, of reference to European standards, penetrates and threatens to blight whatever of original growth might adorn the soil.”
Source: Woman in the 19th century, and kindred papers relating to the sphere, condition, and duties of woman
“Tremble not before the free man, but before the slave who has chains to break.”
Source: Woman in the Nineteenth Century
“... the Power who gave a power, by its mere existence, signifies that it must be brought out towards perfection.”
Source: Woman in the Nineteenth Century
“Preparations are good in life, prologues ruinous.”
Source: Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli: In Three Volumes
“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.”
Source: The Woman and the Myth: Margaret Fuller's Life and Writings
“Spirits that have once been sincerely united and tended together a sacred flame, never become entirely stranger to one another's life.”
Source: The Letters of Margaret Fuller: 1850 and undated
“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.”
Source: Woman in the Ninteenth Century (EasyRead Large Edition)
“Tragedy is always a mistake; and the loneliness of the deepest thinker, the widest lover, ceases to be pathetic to us so soon as the sun is high enough above the mountains.”
Source: Memoirs, [ed.] by R.W. Emerson, W.H. Channing, and J.F. Clarke
“A man who means to think and write a great deal must, after six and twenty, learn to read with his fingers.”
Source: Memoirs, [ed.] by R.W. Emerson, W.H. Channing, and J.F. Clarke
“I find no intellect comparable to my own”
“Let every woman, who has once begun to think, examine herself”
Source: Woman in the Nineteenth Century
“There is no wholly masculine man, no purely feminine woman.”
Source: The Essential Margaret Fuller
“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.”
Source: The Essential Margaret Fuller
“Reverence the highest, have patience with the lowest. Let this day's performance of the meanest duty be thy religion. Are the stars too distant, pick up the pebble that lies at thy feet, and from it learn the all.”
Source: The Dial: A Magazine for Literature, Philosophy, and Religion
“Beware of over-great pleasure in being popular or even beloved. As far as an amiable disposition and powers of entertainment make you so, it is a happiness; but if there is one grain of plausibility, it is poison.”
Source: Woman in the Ninteenth Century (EasyRead Comfort Edition)
“What a difference it makes to come home to a child!”
Source: Woman in the Ninteenth Century (EasyRead Large Edition)
“Harmony exists no less in difference than in likeness, if only the same key-note govern both parts.”
“I accept the universe!”
“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”
Source: Woman in the Ninteenth Century (EasyRead Large Edition)
“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.”
Source: Woman in the nineteenth century: and kindred papers relating to the sphere, condition and duties of woman
“Next to invention is the power of interpreting invention; next to beauty the power of appreciating beauty.”
Source: Memoirs, [ed.] by R.W. Emerson, W.H. Channing, and J.F. Clarke
“We would have every arbitrary barrier thrown down. We would have every path laid open to woman as freely as to man.”
“Wine is earth's answer to the sun.”
“All greatness affects different minds, each in its own particular kind, and the variations of testimony mark the truth of feeling.”
Source: Woman in the 19th century, and kindred papers relating to the sphere, condition, and duties of woman
“When the intellect and affections are in harmony; when intellectual consciousness is calm and deep; inspiration will not be confounded with fancy.”
Source: The Woman and the Myth: Margaret Fuller's Life and Writings
“With the intellect I always have always shall overcome, but that is not the half of the work. The life, the life Oh my God! shall the life never be sweet!”
“The man of science dissects the statement, verifies the facts, and demonstrates connection even where he cannot its purpose.”
Source: The Dial: A Magazine for Literature, Philosophy, and Religion
“I am 'too fiery'... yet I wish to be seen as I am and I would lose all rather than soften away anything.”
“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.”
Source: The letters of Margaret Fuller
“Two persons love in one another the future good which they aid one another to unfold.”
Source: Woman in the Nineteenth Century
“There are noble books but one wants the breath of life sometimes.”
Source: My Heart is a Large Kingdom: Selected Letters of Margaret Fuller
“What concerns me now is that my life be a beautiful, powerful, in a word, a complete life of its kind.”
Source: Woman in the Ninteenth Century (EasyRead Large Edition)
