Mary Wortley Montagu
Mary Wortley Montagu
Lady Mary Wortley Montaguwas an English aristocrat, letter writer and poet. Lady Mary is today chiefly remembered for her letters, particularly her letters from travels to the Ottoman Empire, as wife to the British ambassador to Turkey, which have been described by Billie Melman as "the very first example of a secular work by a woman about the Muslim Orient". Aside from her writing, Lady Mary is also known for introducing and advocating for smallpox inoculation to Britain after her...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth26 May 1689
Mary Wortley Montagu quotes about
Solitude begets whimsies.
Life is too short for a long story
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.
It has all been most interesting.
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.
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.
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.
A face is too slight a foundation for happiness.
A man that is ashamed of passions that are natural and reasonable is generally proud of those that are shameful and silly.
Nature is seldom in the wrong, custom always.
The ultimate end of your education was to make you a good wife.
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.
The knowledge of numbers is one of the chief distinctions between us and the brutes.
General notions are generally wrong.