119 Quotes by Mary Wortley Montagu

No entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor any pleasure so lasting.

I give myself sometimes admirable advice, but I am incapable of taking it.

Nature is indeed a specious ward, nay, there is a great deal in it if it is properly understood and applied, but I cannot bear to hear people using it to justify what common sense must disavow. Is not Nature modifed by art in many things? Was it not designed to be so? And is it not happy for human society that it is so? Would you like to see your husband let his beard grow, until he would be obliged to put the end of it in his pocket, because this beard is the gift of Nature?

Take back the beauty and wit you bestow upon me; leave me my own mediocrity of agreeableness and genius, but leave me also my sincerity, my constancy, and my plain dealing; 'Tis all I have to recommend me to the esteem either of others or myself.

While conscience is our friend, all is at peace; however once it is offended, farewell to a tranquil mind.

I prefer liberty to chains of diamonds.

There is no remedy so easy as books, which if they do not give cheerfulness, at least restore quiet to the most troubled mind.

In short I will part with anything for you but you.

But the fruit that can fall without shaking Indeed is too mellow for me.