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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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Mary Wortley Montagu
Age: 73 †
Born: 1689
Born: January 1
Died: 1762
Died: August 21
Editor
Explorer
Playwright
Poet
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Lady Mary Pierrepont
Mary Pierrepont
Mary Wortley Montagu
World
Follies
Apathy
Inclination
Folly
Empathy
Following
Committed
Complaisance
Believe
Inclinations

More quotes by Mary Wortley Montagu

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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.
Mary Wortley Montagu
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Satire should, like a polished razor keen, Wound with a touch that's scarcely felt or seen.
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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.
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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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
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No modest man ever did or ever will make a fortune.
Mary Wortley Montagu
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We are apt to consider Shakespeare only as a poet but he was certainly one of the greatest moral philosophers that ever lived.
Mary Wortley Montagu
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You can be pleased with nothing if you are not pleased with yourself.
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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Philosophy is the toil which can never tire persons engaged in it. All ways are strewn with roses, and the farther you go, the more enchanting objects appear before you and invite you on.
Mary Wortley Montagu
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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.
Mary Wortley Montagu
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We are educated in the grossest ignorance, and no art omitted to stifle our natural reason if some few get above their nurses instructions, our knowledge must rest concealed and be as useless to the world as gold in the mine.
Mary Wortley Montagu
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Lord Bacon makes beauty to consist of grace and motion.
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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Life is too short for a long story
Mary Wortley Montagu
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Begin nothing without considering what the end may be.
Mary Wortley Montagu
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No entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor any pleasure so lasting.
Mary Wortley Montagu
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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.
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