Mary Wortley Montagu Quotes

Whatever is clearly expressed is well wrote.

The one thing that reconciles me to the fact of being a woman is the reflection that it delivers me from the necessity of being married to one.

It has all been most interesting.

Nature is seldom in the wrong, custom always.

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

General notions are generally wrong.

Nobody should trust their virtue with necessity, the force of which is never known till it is felt, and it is therefore one of the first duties to avoid the temptation of it.

We should ask, not who is the most learned, but who is the best learned.

The knowledge of numbers is one of the chief distinctions between us and the brutes.

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

people never write calmly but when they write indifferently.

Men are vile inconstant toads.

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

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

Time has the same effect on the mind as on the face; the predominant passion and the strongest feature become more conspicuous from the others retiring.

We are apt to consider Shakespeare only as a poet; but he was certainly one of the greatest moral philosophers that ever lived.

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.

The screech-owl, with ill-boding cry, Portends strange things, old women say; Stops every fool that passes by, And frights the school-boy from his play.

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.

Civility cost nothing.

Tis the established custom [in Vienna] for every lady to have two husbands, one that bears the name, and another that performs the duties.

Remember my unalterable maxim, "When we love, we always have something to say.

The most romantic region of every country is that where the mountains unite themselves with the plains or lowlands.

One can never outlive one's vanity.

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.

to be reasonable one should never complain but when one hopes redress.

To always be loved one must ever be agreeable.

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

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

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