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Margaret Fuller Quotes

1810–1850 United States

Sarah Margaret Fuller Ossoli (23 May 1810 – 19 June 1850) was an American author, journalist, critic and women's rights activist. She, her husband, and their child all died at the end of a five week voyage from Europe in a shipwreck just off of Fire Island.

United States
Activists
Authors
Critics
Editors

Also known as: Fuller, Margaret, Margaret Witter Fuller

Random Margaret Fuller quote

91 quotes

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...

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.

The pencil moved prophetic: together now men read
In the fair book of nature, and find the hope they need.
The wreath woven by the river is by the seaside worn,
And one of fate's best arrows to its due mark is borne.

Life Without and Life Within (1859)

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.

Life Without and Life Within (1859)

Harmony exists no less in difference than in likeness, if only the same key-note govern both parts. Woman the poem, man the poet; woman the heart, man the head; such divisions are only important when they are never to be transcended. If nature is never bound down, nor the voice of inspiration stifled, that is enough.

I feel perfectly willing to stay my threescore years and ten, if it be thought I need so much tuition from this planet; but it seems to me that my future upon earth will soon close. It may be terribly trying, but it will not be so very long, now. God will transplant the root, if he wills to rear it into fruit-bearing.

Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli (1852)

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.

Life Without and Life Within (1859)

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.

Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli (1852)

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

Misattributed

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

Misattributed

Be what you would seem to be.

Misattributed

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Margaret Fuller (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.