“Genius will live and thrive without training, but it does not the less reward the watering-pot and pruning-knife.”

— Margaret Fuller, "Life of Sir James Mackintosh," Papers on Literature and Art (1846)

About Margaret Fuller

1810 – 1850

American journalist and women's rights advocate, author of "Woman in the Nineteenth Century".

“A house is no home unless it contain food and fire for the mind as well as for the body.”

“Might the simple maxim, that honesty is the best policy be laid to heart!”

“All around us lies what we neither understand nor use.”

“In theory there is nothing to hinder our following what we are taught; but in life there are many things to draw us aside.”

“That which makes the man no worse than he was makes his life no worse: it has no power to harm, without or within.”

“The young have exalted notions, because they have not been humbled by life or learned its necessary limitations.”

“We live in a country where the people own the Government and not in a country where the Government owns the people.”

“You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you.”

“There is nothing to life that has value, except the degree of power—assuming that life itself is the will to power.”