Margaret Fuller

If you have knowledge, let others light their candles in it.

Nature provides exceptions to every rule.

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.

A house is no home unless it contain food and fire for the mind as well as for the body.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Today a reader, tomorrow a leader.

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.

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

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

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.

Essays, entitled critical, are epistles addressed to the public, through which the mind of the recluse relieves itself of its impressions.