Margaret Fuller Quotes on Philosophy
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There are noble books but one wants the breath of life sometimes. And I see no divine person. I myself am more divine than any I see - I think that is enough to say about them...
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How many persons must there be who cannot worship alone since they are content with so little.
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Very early, I knew that the only object in life was to grow.
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I accept the universe.
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You are intellect, I am life!
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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. There is no wholly masculine man, no purely feminine woman. History jeers at the attempts of physiologists to bind great original laws by the forms which flow from them. They make a rule; they say from observation what can and cannot be. In vain! Nature provides exceptions to every rule. She sends women to battle, and sets Hercules spinning; she enables women to bear immense burdens, cold, and frost; she enables the man, who feels maternal love, to nourish his infant like a mother.
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Those who are not intimately and permanently linked with others, are throw upon themselves; and, if they do not there find peace and incessant life, there is none to flatter them that they are not very poor, and very mean. A position which so constantly admonishes, may be of inestimable benefit. The person may gain, undistracted by other relationships, a closer communion with the one. Such a use is made of it by saints and sibyls.
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The shrine is vowed to freedom, but, my friend, Freedom is but a means to gain an end. Freedom should build the temple, but the shrine Be consecrate to thought still more divine. The human bliss which angel hopes foresaw Is liberty to comprehend the law. Give, then, thy book a larger scope and frame, Comprising means and end in Truth's great name.
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On the boundless plain careering By an unseen compass steering, Wildly flying, reappearing, - With untamed fire their broad eyes glowing In every step a grand pride showing, Of no servile moment knowing, - Happy as the trees and flowers, In their instinct cradled hours, Happier in fuller powers, - See the wild herd nobly ranging, Nature varying, not changing, Lawful in their lawless ranging.
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With equal sweetness the commissioned hours Shed light and dew upon both weeds and flowers. The weeds unthankful raise their vile heads high, Flaunting back insult to the gracious sky; While the dear flowers, wht fond humility, Uplift the eyelids of a starry eye In speechless homage, and, from grateful hearts, Perfume that homage all around imparts.
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The pencil moved prophetic: together now men read In the fair book of nature, and find the hope they need. The wreath woven by the river is by the seaside worn, And one of fate's best arrows to its due mark is borne.
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There are who separate the eternal light In forms of man and woman, day and night; They cannot bear that God be essence quite.
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Existence is as deep a verity: Without the dual, where is unity? And the 'I am'' cannot forbear to be; But from its primal nature forced to frame Mysteries, destinies of various name, Is forced to give that it has taught to claim.
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And dost thou seek to find the one in two? Only upon the old can build the new; The symbol which you seek is found in you.
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There are to whom each symbol is a mask; The life of love is a mysterious task; They want no answer, for they would not ask.
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A single thought transfuses every form; The sunny day is changed into the storm, For light is dark, hard soft, and cold is warm. One presence fill and floods the whole serene; Nothing can be, nothing has ever been, Except the one truth that creates the scene.
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You ask a faith, - they are content with faith; You ask to have, - but they reply 'IT hath.' There is no end, there need be no path.
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The day wears heavily, - why, then, ignore it; Peace is the soul's desire, - such thoughts restore it; The truth thou art, - it needs not implore it.
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The Presence all thy fancies supersedes, All that is done which thou wouldst seek in deeds, The wealth obliterates all seeming needs.
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I do not think we are deceived to grow, But that the crudest fancy, slightest show, Covers some separate truth that we may know. In the one Truth, each separate fact is true; Eternally in one I many view, And destinies through destiny pursue.
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This is my tendency; but can I say That this my thought leads the true, only way? I only know it constant leads, and I obey.
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Triune, shaping, restless power, Life-flow from life's natal hour, No music chords are in thy sound; By some thou'rt but a rattle found; Yet, without thy ceaseless motion, To ice would turn their dead devotion.
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It was thy kiss, Love, that made me immortal.
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To feel that there is so quick a bound to intercourse, makes us prize the moment, but then also makes it so difficult to use. Yet this one thing I wish to say, where so many must be left unsaid. You tell me, that I may, probably never know you wholly. Indeed the obstacles of time and space may prevent my understanding the workings of character; many pages of my new book may be shut against me, better than to yourself. Perhaps? I believe in Ahnungen beyond anything.
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In American literature she will remain a remarkable biographic phenomenon, while the tragic death of this Lycidas of women, a most painful personal story of shipwreck, was intensified by so many melancholy incidents that whoever, long years hence, may read them, will wonder how the gods could have been so pitiless, and why the life of new happiness and larger intellectual achievement which was before her should so suddenly have ended upon that savage and inhospitable shore.
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Only her presence can give you the meaning of the name Margaret Fuller.
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'I accept the universe' is reported to have been a favorite utterance of our New England transcendentalist, Margaret Fuller; and when some one repeated this phrase to Thomas Carlyle, his sardonic comment is said to have been: 'Gad! she'd better!' At bottom the whole concern of both morality and religion is with the manner of our acceptance of the universe. Do we accept it only in part and grudgingly, or heartily and altogether? Shall our protests against certain things in it be radical and unforgiving, or shall we think that, even with evil, there are ways of living that must lead to good? If we accept the whole, shall we do so as if stunned into submission - as Carlyle would have us - 'Gad! we'd better!' - or shall we do so with enthusiastic assent? Morality pure and simple accepts the law of the whole which it finds reigning, so far as to acknowledge and obey it, but it may obey it with the heaviest and coldest heart, and never cease to feel it as a yoke. But for religion, in its strong and fully developed manifestations, the service of the highest never is felt as a yoke. Dull submission is left far behind, and a mood of welcome, which may fill any place on the scale between cheerful serenity and enthusiastic gladness, has taken its place.