Margaret Fuller quotes

Margaret Fuller was an American journalist, critic, and women's rights advocate associated with the transcendentalist movement. A key figure in American intellectual life, she edited "The Dial" and championed social reform. She inspired generations with her work on gender equality and broadened the role of women in society. Here are 155 of her quotes:

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

Margaret Fuller

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

Margaret Fuller

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

Margaret Fuller

Today a reader, tomorrow a leader.

Margaret Fuller

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

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

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

Margaret Fuller

Nature provides exceptions to every rule.

Margaret Fuller

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

Margaret Fuller

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

Margaret Fuller

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

Margaret Fuller

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

Margaret Fuller

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

Margaret Fuller

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

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 the shore.

Margaret Fuller

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

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.

Margaret Fuller

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.

Margaret Fuller

I accept the universe.

Margaret Fuller

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

Margaret Fuller

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.

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