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My chief study all my life has been to lighten misfortunes and multiply pleasures, as far as human nature can.
Mary Wortley Montagu
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Mary Wortley Montagu
Age: 73 †
Born: 1689
Born: January 1
Died: 1762
Died: August 21
Editor
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Lady Mary Pierrepont
Mary Pierrepont
Mary Wortley Montagu
Life
Pleasures
Chief
Chiefs
Study
Pleasure
Nature
Lighten
Human
Multiply
Humans
Misfortunes
More quotes by Mary Wortley Montagu
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
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
It has all been most interesting.
Mary Wortley Montagu
No entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor any pleasure so lasting.
Mary Wortley Montagu
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
Begin nothing without considering what the end may be.
Mary Wortley Montagu
Life is too short for a long story
Mary Wortley Montagu
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
I despise the pleasure of pleasing people that I despise.
Mary Wortley Montagu
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
Whatever is clearly expressed is well wrote.
Mary Wortley Montagu
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
To always be loved one must ever be agreeable.
Mary Wortley Montagu
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.
Mary Wortley Montagu
No entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor any pleasure so lasting. She will not want new fashions nor regret the loss of expensive diversions or variety of company if she can be amused with an author in her closet.
Mary Wortley Montagu
people never write calmly but when they write indifferently.
Mary Wortley Montagu
People commonly educate their children as they build their houses, according to some plan they think beautiful, without considering whether it is suited to the purposes for which they are designed.
Mary Wortley Montagu
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
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
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.
Mary Wortley Montagu
