Margaret Fuller

Let us be wise, and not impede the soul.

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.

Nature provides exceptions to every rule.

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.

It is with just that hope that we welcome everything that tends to strengthen the fibre and develop the nature on more sides. When the intellect and affections are in harmony; when intellectual consciousness is calm and deep; inspiration …

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

Those who seem overladen with electricity frighten those around them.

The electrical, the magnetic element in Woman has not been fairly brought out at any period. Everything might be expected from it; she has far more of it than Man.

Let it not be said, wherever there is energy or creative genius, 'She has a masculine mind.' This by no means argues a willing want of generosity toward Woman. Man is as generous towards her as he knows how to be. Wherever she has herself …

We would have every arbitrary barrier thrown down. We would have every path laid open to Woman as freely as to Man.

There exists in the minds of men a tone of feeling toward women as toward slaves.

Thou art greatly wise, my friend, and ever respected by me, yet I find not in your theory or your scope, room enough for the lyric inspirations, or the mysterious whispers of life. To me it seems that it is madder never to abandon oneself, …

The work is done through all, if not by every one.

The better part of wisdom is a sublime prudence, a pure and patient truth that will receive nothing it is not sure it can permanently lay to heart.

I doubt whether, in the eyes of pure intelligence, an ill-grounded hasty rejection be not a greater sign of weakness than an ill-grounded and hasty faith.

I never lived, that I remember, what you call a common natural day.

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

Who sees the meaning of the flower uprooted in the ploughed field?

All around us lies what we neither understand nor use. Our capacities, our instincts for this our present sphere are but half developed.

To one who has enjoyed the full life of any scene, of any hour, what thoughts can be recorded about it, seem like the commas and semicolons in the paragraph, mere stops.

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

I accept the universe.

Man tells his aspiration in his God; but in his demon he shows his depth of experience; and casts light into the cavern through which he worked his cause up to the cheerful day.

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