Mary Wortley Montagu Quotes

Civility costs nothing, and buys everything.

You can be pleased with nothing if you are not pleased with yourself.

Begin nothing without considering what the end may be.

No entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor any pleasure so lasting.

I prefer liberty to chains of diamonds.

People are never so near playing the fool as when they think themselves wise.

True knowledge consists in knowing things, not words.

To always be loved one must ever be agreeable.

I despise the pleasure of pleasing people that I despise.

There is no remedy so easy as books, which if they do not give cheerfulness, at least restore quiet to the most troubled mind.

Satire should, like a polished razor keen, Wound with a touch that's scarcely felt or seen.

Life is too short for a long story

General notions are generally wrong.

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.

People wish their enemies dead - but I do not; I say give them the gout, give them the stone!

Gardening is certainly the next amusement to reading.

No modest man ever did or ever will make a fortune.

My chief study all my life has been to lighten misfortunes and multiply pleasures, as far as human nature can.

While conscience is our friend, all is at peace; however once it is offended, farewell to a tranquil mind.

In short I will part with anything for you but you.

Forgive what you can't excuse.

Nature is seldom in the wrong, custom always.

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.

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.

I believe more follies are committed out of complaisance to the world, than in following our own inclinations.