Best 94 quotes of Mary Wortley Montagu on MyQuotes

A face is too slight a foundation for happiness.

A man that is ashamed of passions that are natural and reasonable is generally proud of those that are shameful and silly.

A propos of Distempers, I am going to tell you a thing that I am sure will make you wish your selfe here. The Small Pox so fatal and so general amongst us is here entirely harmless by the invention of engrafting (which is the term they give it). There is a set of old Women who make it their business to perform the Operation.

As I approach a second childhood, I endeavor to enter into the pleasures of it.

As marriage produces children, so children produce care and disputes; and wrangling.

A woman, till five-and-thirty, is only looked upon as a raw girl, and can possibly make no noise in the world till about forty.

Begin nothing without considering what the end may be.

Be plain in dress, and sober in your diet; In short, my deary, kiss me, and be quiet.

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

Civility cost nothing.

Civility costs nothing, and buys everything.

Conscience is justice's best minister; it threatens, promises, rewards, and punishes and keeps all under control; the busy must attend to its remonstrances, the most powerful submit to its reproof, and the angry endure its upbraidings. While conscience is our friend all is peace; but if once offended farewell the tranquil mind.

Forgive what you can't excuse.

Gardening is certainly the next amusement to reading.

General notions are generally wrong.

How many thousands ... earnestly seeking what they do not want, while they neglect the real blessings in their possession -- I mean the innocent gratification of their senses, which is all we can properly call our own.

I am afraid we are little better than straws upon the water; we may flatter ourselves that we swim, when the current carries us along.

I am in perfect health, and hear it said I look better than ever I did in my life, which is one of those lies one is always glad to hear.

I am patriot enough to take pains to bring this usefull invention into fashion in England, and I should not fail to write to some of our Doctors very particularly about it, if I knew anyone of 'em that I thought had Virtue enough to destroy such a considerable branch of Revenue for the good of Mankind, but that Distemper is too beneficial to them not to expose to all their Resentment the hardy wight that should undertake to put an end to it.

I believe more follies are committed out of complaisance to the world, than in following our own inclinations.

I despise the pleasure of pleasing people that I despise.

I don't say 'Tis impossible for an impudent man not to rise in the world, but a moderate merit with a large share of impudence is more probable to be advanced than the greatest qualifications without it.

... if it were the fashion to go naked, the face would be hardly observed.

I hate the noise and hurry inseparable from great Estates and Titles, and look upon both as blessings that ought only to be given to fools, for 'Tis only to them that they are blessings.

I have all my life been on my guard against the information conveyed by the sense of hearing -- it being one of my earliest observations, the universal inclination of humankind is to be led by the ears, and I am sometimes apt to imagine that they are given to men as they are to pitchers, purposely that they may be carried about by them.

I have never, in all my various travels, seen but two sorts of people I mean men and women, who always have been, and ever will be, the same. The same vices and the same follies have been the fruit of all ages, though sometimes under different names.

I have often observ'd the loudest Laughers to be the dullest Fellows in the Company.

I know a love may be revived which absence, inconstancy, or even infidelity has extinguished, but there is no returning from a dTgovt given by satiety.

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

I prefer liberty to chains of diamonds.

I regard almost all quarrels of princes on the same footing, and I see nothing that marks man's unreason so positively as war. Indeed, what folly to kill one another for interests often imaginary, and always for the pleasure of persons who do not think themselves even obliged to those who sacrifice themselves for them!

It goes far towards reconciling me to being a woman, when I reflect that I am thus in no danger of ever marrying one.

It has all been most interesting.

It is 11 years since I have seen my figure in a glass [mirror]. The last reflection I saw there was so disagreeable I resolved to spare myself such mortification in the future.

It is the common error of builders and parents to follow some plan they think beautiful (and perhaps is so) without considering that nothing is beautiful that is misplaced.

It's all been very interesting.

It's in no way my interest (according to the common acceptance of that word) to convince the world of their errors; that is, I shall get nothing from it but the private satisfaction of having done good to mankind, and I know nobody that reckons that satisfaction any part of their interest.

It was formerly a terrifying view to me that I should one day be an old woman. I now find that Nature has provided pleasures for every state.

I wish you would moderate that fondness you have for your children. I do not mean you should abate any part of your care, or not do your duty to them in its utmost extent, but I would have you early prepare yourself for disappointments, which are heavy in proportion to their being surprising.

Life is too short for a long story

Lord Bacon makes beauty to consist of grace and motion.

Making verses is almost as common as taking snuff, and God can tell what miserable stuff people carry about in their pockets, and offer to all their acquaintances, and you know one cannot refuse reading and taking a pinch.

Miserable is the fate of writers: if they are agreeable, they are offensive; and if dull, they starve.

Muse, time has taught me that all metaphysical systems, even historical facts given as truths, are hardly that, so I amuse myself with more agreeable lies; I no longer read anything but novels.

My chief study all my life has been to lighten misfortunes and multiply pleasures, as far as human nature can.

My dear Smollett ... disgraces his talent by writing those stupid romances called history.

My health is so often impaired that I begin to be as weary of it as mending old lace; when it is patched in one place, it breaks out in another.

Nature has not placed us in an inferior rank to men, no more than the females of other animals, where we see no distinction of capacity, though I am persuaded if there was a commonwealth of rational horses... it would be an established maxim amongst them that a mare could not be taught to pace.

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?

Nature is seldom in the wrong, custom always.