Top 70 Mary Wortley Montagu Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Life is too short for a long story.”

— Mary Wortley Montagu

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

— Mary Wortley Montagu

3. “Civility costs nothing, and buys everything.”

— Mary Wortley Montagu

4. “General notions are generally wrong.”

— Mary Wortley Montagu

5. “It’s all been very interesting.”

— Mary Wortley Montagu

6. “I give myself sometimes admirable advice, but I am incapable of taking it.”

— Mary Wortley Montagu

7. “Whatever is clearly expressed is well wrote.”

— Mary Wortley Montagu

8. “But the fruit that can fall without shaking Indeed is too mellow for me.”

— Mary Wortley Montagu

9. “True knowledge consists in knowing things, not words.”

— Mary Wortley Montagu

10. “There can be no situation in life in which the conversation of my dear sister will not administer some comfort to me.”

— Mary Wortley Montagu

11. “People wish their enemies dead – but I do not; I say give them the gout, give them the stone!”

— Mary Wortley Montagu

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

— Mary Wortley Montagu

13. “I despise the pleasure of pleasing people that I despise.”

— Mary Wortley Montagu

14. “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

15. “Miserable is the fate of writers: if they are agreeable, they are offensive; and if dull, they starve.”

— Mary Wortley Montagu

16. “As I approach a second childhood, I endeavor to enter into the pleasures of it.”

— Mary Wortley Montagu

17. “Satire should, like a polished razor keen, Wound with a touch that’s scarcely felt or seen.”

— Mary Wortley Montagu

18. “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

19. “Only a mother knows a mother’s fondness.”

— Mary Wortley Montagu

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

— Mary Wortley Montagu

21. “Be plain in dress, and sober in your diet; In short, my deary, kiss me, and be quiet.”

— Mary Wortley Montagu

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

— Mary Wortley Montagu

23. “We travellers are in very hard circumstances. If we say nothing but what has been said before us, we are dull and have observed nothing. If we tell anything new, we are laughed at as fabulous and romantic.”

— Mary Wortley Montagu

24. “We are no more free agents than the queen of clubs when she victoriously takes prisoner the knave of hearts.”

— Mary Wortley Montagu

25. “I prefer liberty to chains of diamonds.”

— Mary Wortley Montagu

26. “There is nothing can pay one for that invaluable ignorance which is the companion of youth, those sanguine groundless hopes, and that lively vanity which makes all the happiness of life.”

— Mary Wortley Montagu

27. “Solitude begets whimsies.”

— Mary Wortley Montagu

28. “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

29. “In short I will part with anything for you but you.”

— Mary Wortley Montagu

30. “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

31. “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

32. “Men are vile inconstant toads.”

— Mary Wortley Montagu

33. “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

34. “Begin nothing without considering what the end may be.”

— Mary Wortley Montagu

35. “And we meet, with champagne and a chicken, at last.”

— Mary Wortley Montagu

36. “Lord Bacon makes beauty to consist of grace and motion.”

— Mary Wortley Montagu

37. “To always be loved one must ever be agreeable.”

— Mary Wortley Montagu

38. “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

39. “One can never outlive one’s vanity.”

— Mary Wortley Montagu

40. “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

41. “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

42. “Copiousness of words, however ranged, is always false eloquence, though it will ever impose on some sort of understandings.”

— Mary Wortley Montagu

43. “I am in perfect health, and hear it said I look better than ever I did in my life, which is one of those lies one is always glad to hear.”

— Mary Wortley Montagu

44. “I have never, in all my various travels, seen but two sorts of people I mean men and women, who always have been, and ever will be, the same. The same vices and the same follies have been the fruit of all ages, though sometimes under different names.”

— Mary Wortley Montagu

45. “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

46. “Nobody can deny but religion is a comfort to the distressed, a cordial to the sick, and sometimes a restraint on the wicked...”

— Mary Wortley Montagu

47. “We have all our playthings. Happy are they who are contented with those they can obtain; those hours are spent in the wisest manner that can easiest shade the ills of life, and are the least productive of ill consequences.”

— Mary Wortley Montagu

48. “I wish you would moderate that fondness you have for your children. I do not mean you should abate any part of your care, or not do your duty to them in its utmost extent, but I would have you early prepare yourself for disappointments, which are heavy in proportion to their being surprising.”

— Mary Wortley Montagu

49. “I have often observ’d the loudest Laughers to be the dullest Fellows in the Company.”

— Mary Wortley Montagu

50. “The ultimate end of your education was to make you a good wife.”

— Mary Wortley Montagu