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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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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
Truths
Lying
Hardly
Read
Given
Systems
Amuse
Facts
Historical
Agreeable
Anything
Lies
Metaphysical
Even
Novel
Muse
Time
Longer
Novels
Taught

More quotes by Mary Wortley Montagu

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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
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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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Whatever is clearly expressed is well wrote.
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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Conscience is justice's best minister it threatens, promises, rewards, and punishes and keeps all under control the busy must attend to its remonstrances, the most powerful submit to its reproof, and the angry endure its upbraidings. While conscience is our friend all is peace but if once offended farewell the tranquil mind.
Mary Wortley Montagu
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A woman, till five-and-thirty, is only looked upon as a raw girl, and can possibly make no noise in the world till about forty.
Mary Wortley Montagu
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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
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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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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
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In short I will part with anything for you but you.
Mary Wortley Montagu
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Lord Bacon makes beauty to consist of grace and motion.
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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To always be loved one must ever be agreeable.
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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Satire should, like a polished razor keen, Wound with a touch that's scarcely felt or seen.
Mary Wortley Montagu
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There is no remedy so easy as books, which if they do not give cheerfulness, at least restore quiet to the most troubled mind.
Mary Wortley Montagu
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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
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I hate the noise and hurry inseparable from great Estates and Titles, and look upon both as blessings that ought only to be given to fools, for 'Tis only to them that they are blessings.
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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How many thousands ... earnestly seeking what they do not want, while they neglect the real blessings in their possession -- I mean the innocent gratification of their senses, which is all we can properly call our own.
Mary Wortley Montagu