Margaret Fuller quotes - page 6

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:

I never lived, that I remember, what you call a common natural day.

Margaret Fuller

But from its primal nature forced to frame Mysteries, destinies of various name, Is forced to give that it has taught to claim.

Margaret Fuller

On the boundless plain careering By an unseen compass steering, Wildly flying, reappearing, - With untamed fire their broad eyes glowing In every step a grand pride showing, Of no servile moment knowing.

Margaret Fuller

When your dreams tire, they go underground and out of kindness that's where they stay.

Margaret Fuller

When people keep telling you that you can't do a thing, you kind of like to try it.

Margaret Fuller

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

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.

Margaret Fuller

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

Margaret Fuller

The life of the soul is incalculable.

Margaret Fuller

The mind is not, I know, a highway, but a temple, and its doors should not be carelessly left open.

Margaret Fuller

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

Margaret Fuller

The critic ... should be not merely a poet, not merely a philosopher, not merely an observer, but tempered of all three.

Margaret Fuller

There are noble books but one wants the breath of life sometimes. And I see no divine person. I myself am more divine than any I see I think that is enough to say about them.

Margaret Fuller

Those have not lived who have not seen Rome.

Margaret Fuller

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

Margaret Fuller

Our capacities, our instincts for this our present sphere are but half developed. Let us be completely natural; before we trouble ourselves with the supernatural.

Margaret Fuller

There are two modes of criticism. One which crushes to earth without mercy all the humble buds of Phantasy, all the plants that, though green and fruitful, are also a prey to insects or have suffered by drought. It weeds well the garden, and cannot believe the weed in its native soil may be a pretty, graceful plant. There is another mode which enters into the natural history of every thing that breathes and lives, which believes no impulse to be entirely in vain, which scrutinizes circumstances, motive and object before it condemns, and believes there is a beauty in natural form, if its law and purpose be understood.

Margaret Fuller

... the public must learn how to cherish the nobler and rarer plants, and to plant the aloe, able to wait a hundred years for it's bloom, or it's garden will contain, presently, nothing but potatoes and pot-herbs.

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

It is with just that hope that we welcome everything that tends to strengthen the fibre and develop the nature on more sides. When the intellect and affections are in harmony; when intellectual consciousness is calm and deep; inspiration will not be confounded with fancy.

Margaret Fuller

Woman, self-centred, would never be absorbed by any relation it would be only an experience to her as to man. It is a vulgar error that love, a love, to Woman is her whole existence; she also is born for Truth and Love in their universal energy.

Margaret Fuller

I am absurdly fearful, and various omens have combined to give me a dark feeling. I am become indeed a miserable coward, for the sake of Angelino. I fear heat and cold, fear the voyage, fear biting poverty. I hope I shall not be forced to be as brave for him, as I have been for myself, and that, if I succeed to rear him, he will be neither a weak nor a bad man. But I love him too much! In case of mishap, however, I shall perish with my husband and my child, and we may be transferred to some happier state.

Margaret Fuller