158 Quotes by Margaret Fuller

A great work of Art demands a great thought or a thought of beauty adequately expressed. - Neither in Art nor Literature more than in Life can an ordinary thought be made interesting because well-dressed.

The life of the soul is incalculable.

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 the shore.

Here, as elsewhere, the gain of creation consists always in the growth of individual minds, which live and aspire, as flowers bloom and birds sing, in the midst of morasses; and in the continual development of that thought, the thought of human destiny, which is given to eternity adequately to express, and which ages of failure only seemingly impede.

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.

Yet, by men in this country, as by the Jews, when Moses was leading them to the promised land, everything has been done that inherited depravity could do, to hinder the promise of Heaven from its fulfilment. The cross, here as elsewhere, has been planted only to be blasphemed by cruelty and fraud.

Accursed be he who willingly saddens an immortal spirit – doomed to infamy in later, wiser ages, doomed in future stages of his own being to deadly penance, only short of death.

We have waited here long in the dust; we are tired and hungry; but the triumphal procession must appear at last.

I find no intellect comparable to my own.