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People are never so near playing the fool as when they think themselves wise.
Mary Wortley Montagu
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Mary Wortley Montagu
Age: 73 †
Born: 1689
Born: January 1
Died: 1762
Died: August 21
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Lady Mary Pierrepont
Mary Pierrepont
Mary Wortley Montagu
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More quotes by 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
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
General notions are generally wrong.
Mary Wortley Montagu
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
I despise the pleasure of pleasing people that I despise.
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
Lord Bacon makes beauty to consist of grace and motion.
Mary Wortley Montagu
Copiousness of words, however ranged, is always false eloquence, though it will ever impose on some sort of understandings.
Mary Wortley Montagu
I believe more follies are committed out of complaisance to the world, than in following our own inclinations.
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
Gardening is certainly the next amusement to reading.
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
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
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
To always be loved one must ever be agreeable.
Mary Wortley Montagu
The pretty fellows you speak of, I own entertain me sometimes, but is it impossible to be diverted with what one despises? I can laugh at a puppet show, at the same time I know there is nothing in it worth my attention or regard.
Mary Wortley Montagu
Life is too short for a long story
Mary Wortley Montagu
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.
Mary Wortley Montagu
Begin nothing without considering what the end may be.
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