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The use of knowledge in our sex (beside the amusement of solitude) is to moderate the passions and learn to be contented with a small expense, which are the certain effects of a studious life and, it may be, preferable even to that fame which men have engrossed to themselves and will not suffer us to share.

Mary Wortley Montagu

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Mary Wortley Montagu
Age: 73 †
Born: 1689
Born: January 1
Died: 1762
Died: August 21
Editor
Explorer
Playwright
Poet
Writer
Lady Mary Pierrepont
Mary Pierrepont
Mary Wortley Montagu
Certain
Effects
Expense
May
Share
Beside
Engrossed
Even
Small
Expenses
Studious
Men
Passion
Passions
Preferable
Life
Knowledge
Suffer
Contented
Suffering
Solitude
Moderate
Learn
Fame
Moderates
Use
Sex
Amusement

More quotes by Mary Wortley Montagu

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The most romantic region of every country is that where the mountains unite themselves with the plains or lowlands.
Mary Wortley Montagu
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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.
Mary Wortley Montagu
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Gardening is certainly the next amusement to reading.
Mary Wortley Montagu
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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.
Mary Wortley Montagu
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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.
Mary Wortley Montagu
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The pious farmer, who ne'er misses pray'rs, With patience suffers unexpected rain He blesses Heav'n for what its bounty spares, And sees, resign'd, a crop of blighted grain. But, spite of sermons, farmers would blaspheme, If a star fell to set their thatch on flame.
Mary Wortley Montagu
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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.
Mary Wortley Montagu
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We should ask, not who is the most learned, but who is the best learned.
Mary Wortley Montagu
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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.
Mary Wortley Montagu
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Lord Bacon makes beauty to consist of grace and motion.
Mary Wortley Montagu
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I believe more follies are committed out of complaisance to the world, than in following our own inclinations.
Mary Wortley Montagu
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The familiarities of the gaming-table contribute very much to the decay of politeness ... The pouts and quarrels that naturally arise from disputes must put an end to all complaisance, or even good will towards one another.
Mary Wortley Montagu
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General notions are generally wrong.
Mary Wortley Montagu
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We are no more free agents than the queen of clubs when she victoriously takes prisoner the knave of hearts.
Mary Wortley Montagu
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Prudent people are very happy 'tis an exceeding fine thing, that's certain, but I was born without it, and shall retain to my day of Death the Humour of saying what I think.
Mary Wortley Montagu
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Copiousness of words, however ranged, is always false eloquence, though it will ever impose on some sort of understandings.
Mary Wortley Montagu
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No modest man ever did or ever will make a fortune.
Mary Wortley Montagu
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As I approach a second childhood, I endeavor to enter into the pleasures of it.
Mary Wortley Montagu
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Take back the beauty and wit you bestow upon me leave me my own mediocrity of agreeableness and genius, but leave me also my sincerity, my constancy, and my plain dealing 'Tis all I have to recommend me to the esteem either of others or myself.
Mary Wortley Montagu
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Strictly speaking, there is but one real evil: I mean acute pain. All other complaints are so considerably diminished by time that it is plain the grief is owing to our passion, since the sensation of it vanishes when that is over.
Mary Wortley Montagu