Margaret Fuller
Margaret Fuller
Sarah Margaret Fuller Ossoli, commonly known as Margaret Fuller, was an American journalist, critic, and women's rights advocate associated with the American transcendentalism movement. She was the first full-time American female book reviewer in journalism. Her book Woman in the Nineteenth Century is considered the first major feminist work in the United States...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionActivist
Date of Birth23 May 1810
CityCambridge, MA
CountryUnited States of America
Essays, entitled critical, are epistles addressed to the public, through which the mind of the recluse relieves itself of its impressions.
There exists in the minds of men a tone of feeling toward women as toward slaves.
Drudgery is as necessary to call out the treasures of the mind, as harrowing and planting those of the earth.
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.
Be what you would seem to be.
This is the method of genius, to ripen fruit for the crowd by those rays of whose heat they complain.
We cannot have expression till there is something to be expressed.
Truth is the nursing mother of genius.
The soul of the great musician can only be expressed in music.
You see how wide the gulf that separates me from the Christian church.
What I mean by the Muse is that unimpeded clearness of the intuitive powers, which a perfectly truthful adherence to every admonition of the higher instincts would bring to a finely organized human being. It may appear as prophesy or as poesy...should these faculties have free play, I believe they will open up new, deeper and purer sources of joyous inspiration than have as yet refreshed the earth.
The only woman to whom it has been given to touch what is decisive in the present world and to have a presentiment of the world of the future.
After having admired the women of Rome, say to yourself, 'I too am beautiful!' ... In you I met a real person. I need not give you any other praise.
Beware of over-great pleasure in being popular or even beloved.