Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689–1762,) née Pierrepont, was an English aristocrat, letter writer, and poet. Renowned for her wit and verse, she worked to introduce the system of inoculation against smallpox into Britain.
Born in London, Montagu was the eldest daughter of the 5th Earl (afterward Duke) of Kingston. A colorful, eccentric feminist and a famous society host, she did not consent to a marriage arranged by her father. Instead, she eloped and secretly wed Edward Wortley Montagu, a Whig Member of Parliament. The couple lived in Constantinople (today’s Istanbul,) where Edward worked as ambassador 1716–18. Lady Mary is remembered chiefly for the letters she wrote in almost every epistolary style from Constantinople and Vienna, specifically her letters from her travels around the Ottoman Empire.
Lady Montagu’s attractiveness was tarnished by an acute attack of smallpox while she was still young. After discovering the process of inoculation against smallpox in Turkey, she was instrumental in introducing inoculation in Great Britain.
Subsequently, Lady Montagu embarked upon a period of intense literary activity. She had earlier written a set of six “town eclogues” that were witty variations of the Roman poet Virgil. She composed an anonymous and lively criticism of the satirist Jonathan Swift (1734,) a play, Simplicity (c.1735,) adapted from the French of Pierre de Marivaux. She also wrote a series of incisive essays about feminism and the moral cynicism of her time.
Lady Montagu had a celebrated quarrel with the English poet Alexander Pope after publishing harsh, sarcastic criticisms of him. Pope counter-attacked her as the “Sappho” in some of his satiric works, including in his First Satire of the Second Book of Horace Imitated (1733.)
In 1739, Lady Montagu left Britain and her husband to live for 23 years in France and Italy. Her Letters and Works appeared in 1837. The Complete Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (3 vols., 1965–67,) was the first full edition of her letters. A new version of her Turkish Embassy Letters came out in 1993.
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There can be no situation in life in which the conversation of my dear sister will not administer some comfort to me.
—Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
Topics: Communication
Writers of novels and romances in general bring a double loss on their readers, — they rob them both of their time and money; representing men, manners, and things, that never have been, nor are likely to be; either confounding or perverting history and truth, inflating the mind, or committing violence upon the understanding.
—Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
Topics: Romance
No entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor any pleasure so lasting.
—Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
Topics: Pleasure, Books, Reading
My chief study all my life has been to lighten misfortunes and multiply pleasures, as far as human nature can.
—Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
Topics: Pleasure
The use of knowledge in our sex (beside the amusement of solitude) is to moderate the passions and learn to be contented with a small expense, which are the certain effects of a studious life and, it may be, preferable even to that fame which men have engrossed to themselves and will not suffer us to share.
—Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
Topics: Knowledge
I am charmed with many points of the Turkish law; when proved the authors of any notorious falsehood, they are burned on the forehead with a hot iron.
—Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
Conscience is justice’s best minister. It threatens, promises, rewards, and punishes, and keeps all under its control. — The busy must attend to its remonstrances; the most powerful submit to its reproof, and the angry endure its up-braidings. — While conscience is our friend, all is peace; but if once offended, farewell to the tranquil mind.
—Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
Topics: Conscience
But the fruit that can fall without shaking indeed is too mellow for me.
—Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
Topics: Language
I prefer liberty to chains of diamonds.
—Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
To always be loved one must ever be agreeable.
—Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
Topics: Love
‘Tis a sort of duty to be rich, that it may be in one’s power to do good, riches being another word for power.
—Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
Topics: Wealth
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.
—Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
Topics: Men & Women
A man that is ashamed of passions that are natural and reasonable is generally proud of those that are shameful and silly.
—Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
Topics: Men
We are no more free agents than the queen of clubs when she victoriously takes prisoner the knave of hearts.
—Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
Topics: Destiny
A face is too slight a foundation for happiness.
—Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
I regard almost all quarrels of princes on the same footing, and I see nothing that marks man’s unreason so positively as war. Indeed, what folly to kill one another for interests often imaginary, and always for the pleasure of persons who do not think themselves even obliged to those who sacrifice themselves for them!
—Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
Topics: War
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.
—Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
Topics: Aristocracy
I know a love may be revived which absence, inconstancy, or even infidelity has extinguished, but there is no returning from a degout given by satiety.
—Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
Topics: Love
Take back the beauty and wit you bestow upon me; leave me my own mediocrity of agreeableness and genius, but leave me also my sincerity, my constancy, and my plain dealing; ’tis all I have to recommend me to the esteem either of others or myself.
—Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
Topics: Mediocrity, Beauty
Politeness costs nothing and gains everything.
—Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
Topics: Kindness
Solitude begets whimsies.
—Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
Topics: Solitude
Prudent people are very happy; ’tis an exceeding fine thing, that’s certain, but I was born without it, and shall retain to my day of Death the Humour of saying what I think.
—Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
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.
—Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
Topics: Necessity
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.
—Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
Topics: Belief
It is the common error of builders and parents to follow some plan they think beautiful (and perhaps is so) without considering that nothing is beautiful that is misplaced.
—Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
Satire should, like a polished razor, keen, wound with a touch that is scarcely felt or seen.
—Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
Nature has not placed us in an inferior rank to men, no more than the females of other animals, where we see no distinction of capacity, though I am persuaded if there was a commonwealth of rational horses… it would be an established maxim amongst them that a mare could not be taught to pace.
—Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
Topics: Women, Men & Women, Men
You can be pleased with nothing if you are not pleased with yourself.
—Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
Topics: Confidence
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.
—Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
Topics: Parents
Strictly speaking, there is but one real evil: I mean acute pain. All other complaints are so considerably diminished by time that it is plain the grief is owing to our passion, since the sensation of it vanishes when that is over.
—Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
Whoever will cultivate their own mind will find full employment. Every virtue does not only require great care in the planting, but as much daily solicitude in cherishing as exotic fruits and flowers; the vices and passions (which I am afraid are the natural product of the soil) demand perpetual weeding. Add to this the search after knowledge… and the longest life is too short.
—Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
Topics: Progress, Self-improvement
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.
—Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
Topics: Women
We travelers 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.
—Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
Topics: Travel
The ultimate end of your education was to make you a good wife.
—Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
Topics: Family
Be plain in dress, and sober in your diet; In short, my dear, kiss me and be quiet.
—Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
Topics: Proverbs, Humility, One Step at a Time
No modest man ever did or ever will make a fortune.
—Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
Topics: Humility
Nobody can deny but religion is a comfort to the distressed, a cordial to the sick, and sometimes a restraint on the wicked; therefore whoever would argue or laugh it out of the world without giving some equivalent for it ought to be treated as a common enemy.
—Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
Topics: Religion
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.
—Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
Topics: Education
I don’t say ‘Tis impossible for an impudent man not to rise in the world, but a moderate merit with a large share of impudence is more probable to be advanced than the greatest qualifications without it.
—Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
Topics: Growth
Civility costs nothing, and buys everything.
—Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
Topics: Kindness, Manners
I sometimes give myself admirable advice, but I am incapable of taking it.
—Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
Topics: Advice
Nature is seldom in the wrong, custom always.
—Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
Topics: Custom
Life is too short for a long story.
—Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
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.
—Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
Topics: Youth
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.
—Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
Topics: Human Nature, Humanity
And we meet, with champagne and a chicken, at last.
—Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
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