Margaret Fuller

"Today a reader, tomorrow a leader."

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

"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."

Margaret Fuller

"Men disappoint me so, I disappoint myself so, yet courage, patience, shuffle the cards ..."

Margaret Fuller

"How many persons must there be who cannot worship alone since they are content with so little."

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

"Let no one dare to call another mad who is not himself willing to rank in the same class for every perversion and fault of judgment. Let no one dare aid in punishing another as criminal who is not willing to suffer the penalty due to his own offenses."

Margaret Fuller

"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

"Women are the best helpers of one another. Let them think; let them act; till they know what they need. But if you ask me what offices they may fill, I reply-any. Let them be sea-captains if you will."

Margaret Fuller

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

Margaret Fuller

"Genius will live and thrive without training, but it does not the less reward the watering-pot and pruning-knife."

Margaret Fuller

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

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 its shores."

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

"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

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

Margaret Fuller

"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

"I accept the universe."

Margaret Fuller

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

Margaret Fuller

"I am 'too fiery' … yet I wish to be seen as I am, and would lose all rather than soften away anything."

Margaret Fuller

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

Margaret Fuller

"You are intellect, I am life!"

Margaret Fuller

"To one who has enjoyed the full life of any scene, of any hour, what thoughts can be recorded about it, seem like the commas and semicolons in the paragraph, mere stops."

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

"Who sees the meaning of the flower uprooted in the ploughed field? The ploughman who does not look beyond its boundaries and does not raise his eyes from the ground ? No — but the poet who sees that field in its relations with the universe, and looks oftener to the sky than on the ground. Only the dreamer shall understand realities, though, in truth, his dreaming must not be out of proportion to his waking!"

Margaret Fuller