Margaret Fuller: Trending quotes (page 5)

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

Margaret Fuller

Letter to her brother, (20 December 1840) as quoted in The Feminist Papers (1973) by Alice Rossi.

Pleasure

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

Margaret Fuller

Libby Houston, in the poem "Gold" in Necessity (1988).
Misattributed

Dreams

“Heroes have filled the zodiac of beneficent labors, and then given up their mortal part to the fire without a murmur. Sages and lawgivers have bent their whole nature to the search for truth, and thought themselves happy if they could buy, with the sacrifice of all temporal ease and pleasure, one seed for the future Eden. Poets and priests have strung the lyre with heart-strings, poured out their best blood upon the altar which, reare'd anew from age to age, shall at last sustain the flame which rises to highest heaven. What shall we say of those who, if not so directly, or so consciously, in connection with the central truth, yet, led and fashioned by a divine instinct, serve no less to develop and interpret the open secret of love passing into life, the divine energy creating for the purpose of happiness; — of the artist, whose hand, drawn by a preexistent harmony to a certain medium, moulds it to expressions of life more highly and completely organized than are seen elsewhere, and, by carrying out the intention of nature, reveals her meaning to those who are not yet sufficiently matured to divine it; of the philosopher, who listens steadily for causes, and, from those obvious, infers those yet unknown; of the historian, who, in faith that all events must have their reason and their aim, records them, and lays up archives from which the youth of prophets may be fed. The man of science dissects the statement, verifies the facts, and demonstrates connection even where he cannot its purpose·”

Margaret Fuller book Woman in the Nineteenth Century

Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845)

Love , Life , Pleasure , Truth

“Your prudence, my wise friend, allows too little room for the mysterious whisperings of life.”

Margaret Fuller

To Ralph Waldo Emerson, as quoted in "Humanity, said Edgar Allan Poe, is divided into Men, Women, and Margaret Fuller" Joseph Jay Deiss in American Heritage magazine, Vol. 23, Issue 5 (August 1972).

Life

“Guard thee from the power of evil;
Who cannot trust, vows to the devil.”

Margaret Fuller

Life Without and Life Within (1859), My Seal-Ring

Evil

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

Margaret Fuller

Margaret Chase Smith, quoted in More Than Petticoats : Remarkable Maine Women (2005) by Kate Kennedy
Misattributed

People

“Triune, shaping, restless power,
Life-flow from life's natal hour,
No music chords are in thy sound;
By some thou'rt but a rattle found;
Yet, without thy ceaseless motion,
To ice would turn their dead devotion.”

Margaret Fuller

Life Without and Life Within (1859), Sistrum

Life , Music , Dead

“Though deepest dark our efforts should enfold,
Unwearied mine to find the vein of gold;
Forget not oft to lift the hope on high;
The rosy dawn again shall fill the sky.

And by that lovely light, all truth-revealed,
The cherished forms which sad distrust concealed,
Transfigured, yet the same, will round us stand,
The kindred angels of a faithful band;
Ruby and ebon cross both cast aside,
No lamp is needed, for the night has died.”

Margaret Fuller

Life Without and Life Within (1859), Sub Rosa, Crux

Love , Truth , Sadness , Faith

“Safety is not to be secured, then, by the wisest foresight. I shall embark more composedly in our merchant-ship, praying fervently, indeed, that it may not be my lot to lose my boy at sea, either by unsolaced illness, or amid the howling waves; or, if so, that Ossoli, Angelo, and I may go together, and that the anguish may be brief.”

Margaret Fuller

Letter (21 April 1850).
Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli (1852)

Boy , Sea

“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 its shores.”

Margaret Fuller

"American Literature" in Papers on Literature and Art (1846), p. 122.

Life , Books , Literature , Idea

“We will worship by impromptu symbols, till the religion is framed for all Humanity. The beauty grows around us daily, the trees are now all in blossom and some of the vines; there is a Crown Imperial just in perfection, to which I paid my evening worship by the light of the fire, which reached to us, and there are flashes of lightening too. But I do not like the lightening so well as once, having been in too great danger. Yet just now a noble flash falls upon my paper, it ought to have noble thoughts to illumine, instead of these little nothings, but indeed to-night I write only to say: thou dear, dear friend, and we must must meet soon.”

Margaret Fuller

Letter IV to James Nathan (March 1845).
The Love Letters Of Margaret Fuller (1903)

Religion , Beauty , Tree , Light

“In times of old, as we are told,
When men more child-like at the feet
Of Jesus sat, than now,
A chivalry was known more bold
Than ours, and yet of stricter vow,
Of worship more complete.”

Margaret Fuller

Life Without and Life Within (1859), Sub Rosa, Crux

Men , Time

“There is a Polish countess here, who likes me much. She has been very handsome, still is, in the style of the full-blown rose. She is a widow, very rich, one of the emancipated women, naturally vivacious, and with talent. This woman envies me; she says, "How happy you are; so free, so serene, so attractive, so self-possessed!" I say not a word, but I do not look on myself as particularly enviable. A little money would have made me much more so; a little money would have enabled me to come here long ago, and find those that belong to me, or at least try my experiments; then my health would never have sunk, nor the best years of my life been wasted in useless friction. Had I money now, — could I only remain, take a faithful servant, and live alone, and still see those I love when it is best, that would suit me. It seems to me, very soon I shall be calmed, and begin to enjoy.”

Margaret Fuller

Letter (17 November 1847).
Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli (1852)

Love , Life , Women , Money

“Wouldst have the princely spirit bowed?
Whisper only, speak not loud,
Mark and leave him in the crowd.

Thou need'st not spies nor jailers have;
The free will serve thee like the slave,
Coward shrinking from the brave.”

Margaret Fuller

Life Without and Life Within (1859), The Captured Wild Horse

“Those who are not intimately and permanently linked with others, are thrown upon themselves; and, if they do not there find peace and incessant life, there is none to flatter them that they are not very poor, and very mean.
A position which so constantly admonishes, may be of inestimable benefit. The person may gain, undistracted by other relationships, a closer communion with the one. Such a use is made of it by saints and sibyls.”

Margaret Fuller book Woman in the Nineteenth Century

Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845)

Life , Peace , Personality

“Man tells his aspiration in his God; but in his demon he shows his depth of experience; and casts light into the cavern through which he worked his cause up to the cheerful day.”

Margaret Fuller

As quoted in Margaret Fuller Ossoli (1898) by Thomas Wentworth Higginson, p. 289-91.

God , Light

“There are to whom each symbol is a mask;
The life of love is a mysterious task;
They want no answer, for they would not ask.”

Margaret Fuller

Life Without and Life Within (1859), The One In All

Love , Life

“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.”

Margaret Fuller

"American Facts" in Life Without and Life Within (1860) edited by Arthur Buckminster Fuller, p. 108.

World , Way , Nature , Falseness

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

Margaret Fuller

"A Short Essay on Critics" in Papers on Literature and Art (1846), p. 5.

“Were the destiny of woman thus exactly marked out, did she invariably retain the shelter of a parent’s or guardian’s roof till she married, did marriage give her a sure home and a protector, were she never liable to be made a widow, or, if so, sure of finding immediate protection from a brother or new husband, so that she might never be forced to stand alone one moment, and were her mind given for this world only, with no faculties capable of eternal growth and infinite improvement, we would still demand of her a far wider and more generous culture than is proposed by those who so anxiously define her sphere.”

Margaret Fuller

Article, The New York Daily Tribune (30 September 1845); quoted in Brilliant Bylines (1986) by Barbara Belford.

Marriage , World , Home , Parent