C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
Margaret Fuller
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.
I am suffocated and lost when I have not the bright feeling of progression.
In order that she may be able to give her hand with dignity, she must be able to stand alone.
Next to invention is the power of interpreting invention; next to beauty, the power of appreciating beauty.
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.
Reverence the highest, have patience with the lowest. Let this day’s performance of the meanest duty be thy religion. Are the stars too distant, pick up the pebble that lies at thy feet and from it learn the all.
The well-instructed moon flies not from her orbit to seize on the glories of her partner.
There is some danger lest there be no real religion in the heart which craves too much daily sympathy.
This is the method of genius, to ripen fruit for the crowd by those rays of whose heat they complain.
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.
Woman is born for love, and it is impossible to turn her from seeking it.
Women could take part in the processions, the songs, the dances, of old religion; no one fancied their delicacy was impaired by appearing in public for such a cause.