Margaret Fuller
Those have not lived who have not seen Rome.Collection: Rome
... the Power who gave a power, by its mere existence, signifies that it must be brought out towards perfection.Collection: Perfection
How many persons must there be who cannot worship alone since they are content with so little.Collection: Littles
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.Collection: Mean
This is the method of genius, to ripen fruit for the crowd by those rays of whose heat they complain.Collection: Rays
Genius will live and thrive without training, but it does not the less reward the watering pot and the pruning knife.Collection: Education
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.Collection: Men
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.Collection: Book
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.Collection: Men
A man who means to think and write a great deal must, after six and twenty, learn to read with his fingers.Collection: Writing
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 prophesy or as poesy...should these faculties have free play, I believe they will open up new, deeper and purer sources of joyous inspiration than have as yet refreshed the earth.Collection: Believe
Most marvelous and enviable is that fecundity of fancy which can adorn whatever it touches, which can invest naked fact and dry reasoning with unlooked-for beauty, make flowers bloom even on the brow of the precipice, and, when nothing better can be had, can turn the very substance of rock itself into moss and lichens. This faculty is uncomparingly the most important for the vivid and attractive exhibition of truth to the minds of men.Collection: Beauty
The Arabian horse will not plough well, nor can the plough-horse be rode to play the jereed.Collection: Horse
Certainly I do not wish that instead of these masters I had read baby books, written down to children, and with such ignorant dullness that they blunt the sense and corrupt the tastes of the still plastic human being. But I do wish that I had read no books at all till later - that I had lived with toys, and played in the open air. Children should not cull the fruits of reflection and observation early, but expand in the sun, and let thoughts come to them. They should not through books antedate their actual experiences.Collection: Baby
Every fact is impure, but every fact contains in it the juices of life. Every fact is a clod, from which may grow an amaranth or a palm.Collection: Juice
There is some danger lest there be no real religion in the heart which craves too much daily sympathy.Collection: Sympathy
Our friends should be our incentives to right, but not only our guiding, but our prophetic, stars. To love by right is much, to love by faith is more; both are the entire love, without which heart, mind, and soul cannot be alike satisfied. We love and ought to love one another, not merely for the absolute worth of each, but on account of a mutual fitness of temporary character.Collection: Friends
The Greeks saw everything in forms which we are trying to ascertain as law, and classify as cause.Collection: Thinking
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!Collection: Life
Preparations are good in life, prologues ruinous.Collection: Preparation
After having admired the women of Rome, say to yourself, 'I too am beautiful!' ... In you I met a real person. I need not give you any other praise.Collection: Beautiful
When the intellect and affections are in harmony; when intellectual consciousness is calm and deep; inspiration will not be confounded with fancy.Collection: Inspirational
You see how wide the gulf that separates me from the Christian church.Collection: Christian
Who does not observe the immediate glow and security that is diffused over the life of woman, before restless or fretful, by engaging in gardening, building, or the lowest department of art? Here is something that is not routine--something that draws forth life towards the infinite.Collection: Art
It is not because the touch of genius has roused genius to production, but because the admiration of genius has made talent ambitious, that the harvest is still so abundant.Collection: Ambitious
The only woman to whom it has been given to touch what is decisive in the present world and to have a presentiment of the world of the future.Collection: World
We doubt not the destiny of our country that she is to accomplish great things for human nature, and be the mother of a nobler race than the world has yet known. But she has been so false to the scheme made out at her nativity, that it is now hard to say which way that destiny points.Collection: Country
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.Collection: Learning
All great expression, which on a superficial survey seems so easy as well as so simple, furnishes after a while, to the faithful observer, its own standard by which to appreciate it.Collection: Simple
A great work of Art demands a great thought or a thought of beauty adequately expressed. - Neither in Art nor Literature more than in Life can an ordinary thought be made interesting because well-dressed.Collection: Beauty
No temple can still the personal griefs and strifes in the breasts of its visitors.Collection: Grief
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.Collection: Half
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.Collection: Fashion
Everywhere the fatal spirit of imitation, of reference to European standards, penetrates and threatens to blight whatever of original growth might adorn the soil.Collection: Growth
I know of no inquiry which the impulses of man suggests that is forbidden to the resolution of man to pursue.Collection: Wisdom
Some degree of expression is necessary for growth, but it should be little in proportion to the full life.Collection: Expression
All greatness affects different minds, each in its own particular kind, and the variations of testimony mark the truth of feeling.Collection: Greatness
Put up at the moment of greatest suffering a prayer, not for thy own escape, but for the enfranchisement of some being dear to thee, and the sovereign spirit will accept thy ransom.Collection: Prayer
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.Collection: Heart
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.Collection: Home
We cannot have expression till there is something to be expressed.Collection: Expression
Wine is earth's answer to the sun.Collection: Wine
There is no wholly masculine man, no purely feminine woman.Collection: Men
Life is richly worth living, with its continual revelations of mighty woe, yet infinite hope; and I take it to my breast.Collection: Woe
Woman is born for love, and it is impossible to turn her from seeking it.Collection: Destiny
While any one is base, none can be entirely free and noble.Collection: Freedom
Let every woman, who has once begun to think, examine herselfCollection: Thinking
The soul of the great musician can only be expressed in music.Collection: Soul
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.Collection: Lying