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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
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Mary Wortley Montagu
Age: 73 †
Born: 1689
Born: January 1
Died: 1762
Died: August 21
Editor
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Playwright
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Lady Mary Pierrepont
Mary Pierrepont
Mary Wortley Montagu
Boys
Screech
Strange
Owl
School
Fright
Women
Stops
Play
Passes
Every
Ill
Things
Cry
Fool
More quotes by 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
People are never so near playing the fool as when they think themselves wise.
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
General notions are generally wrong.
Mary Wortley Montagu
Begin nothing without considering what the end may be.
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
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
No entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor any pleasure so lasting.
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
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
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
The most romantic region of every country is that where the mountains unite themselves with the plains or lowlands.
Mary Wortley Montagu
... if it were the fashion to go naked, the face would be hardly observed.
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
Let this great maxim be my virtue's guide,- In part she is to blame that has been tried: He comes too near that comes to be denied.
Mary Wortley Montagu
A propos of Distempers, I am going to tell you a thing that I am sure will make you wish your selfe here. The Small Pox so fatal and so general amongst us is here entirely harmless by the invention of engrafting (which is the term they give it). There is a set of old Women who make it their business to perform the Operation.
Mary Wortley Montagu
One can never outlive one's vanity.
Mary Wortley Montagu
As I approach a second childhood, I endeavor to enter into the pleasures of it.
Mary Wortley Montagu
Gardening is certainly the next amusement to reading.
Mary Wortley Montagu
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