Margaret Fuller Quotes
American - Critic May 23, 1810 - June 19, 1850


Today a reader, tomorrow a leader.
Margaret Fuller

If you have knowledge, let others light their candles in 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

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

We need to hear the excuses men make to themselves for their worthlessness.
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

Nature provides exceptions to every rule.
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

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

It is astonishing what force, purity, and wisdom it requires for a human being to keep clear of falsehoods.
Margaret Fuller

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

Would that the simple maxim, that honesty is the best policy, might be laid to heart; that a sense of the true aim of life might elevate the tone of politics and trade till public and private honor become identical.
Margaret Fuller

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

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

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

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

It should be remarked that, as the principle of liberty is better understood, and more nobly interpreted, a broader protest is made in behalf of women. As men become aware that few have had a fair chance, they are inclined to say that no women have had a fair chance.
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

Two persons love in one another the future good which they aid one another to unfold.
Margaret Fuller

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

Be what you would seem to be - or, if you'd like it put more simply - a house is no home unless it contains food and fire for the mind as well as the body.
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

The character and history of each child may be a new and poetic experience to the parent, if he will let it.
Margaret Fuller

Drudgery is as necessary to call out the treasures of the mind, as harrowing and planting those of the earth.
Margaret Fuller

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