Top 100 Montagu Quotes
#1. Indeed such is Montagu's enthusiasm, and so engaging is his undisguised admiration, that one is almost obligated to overlook the aside on page 311 where Montagu acknowledges indirectly that Tyson was almost entirely in error in all of his conclusions.
Richard T. Nash
#2. Britain's counterespionage officers saw signs of treachery in everything Ivor Montagu did: they saw it in his friends, his appearance, his opinions, and his behavior. But above all, they saw it in his passionate, and dubious, love of table tennis.
Ben Macintyre
#3. For God's sake, madam, when you write to me, talk of yourself; there is nothing I so much desire to hear of; talk a great deal of yourself, that she who I always thought talked best may speak upon the best subject.
Alexander Pope to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
Michael Kelahan
#4. The door opened, held by the butler, and Lord Montagu swept into the room, his presence overwhelming the space. She could swear even the flowers in their vases perked up and listed in his direction. Honest to Pete.
Angela Quarles
#5. 'The Man Who Never Was,' by Ewen Montagu, remains the best book about wartime espionage written by an active participant - incomplete, and dry in parts, it nonetheless summons up the ingenuity and sheer eccentricity of those who played this strange and dangerous game.
Ben Macintyre
#6. It is better to eat the dog than be eaten by the dog', Montagu had remarked quietly to the king, after being dismissed from Mortimer's presence.
Ian Mortimer
#8. Love, for too many men in our time, consists of sleeping with a seductive woman, one who is properly endowed with the right distribution of curves and conveniences and one upon whom a permanent lien has been acquired through the institution of marriage.
Ashley Montagu
#9. It is 11 years since I have seen my figure in a glass [mirror]. The last reflection I saw there was so disagreeable I resolved to spare myself such mortification in the future.
Mary Wortley Montagu
#10. The majority of people believe in incredible things which are absolutely false. The majority of people daily act in a manner prejudicial to their general well-being.
Ashley Montagu
#11. Muse, time has taught me that all metaphysical systems, even historical facts given as truths, are hardly that, so I amuse myself with more agreeable lies; I no longer read anything but novels.
Mary Wortley Montagu
#12. I give myself sometimes admirable advice, but I am incapable of taking it.
Mary Wortley Montagu
#15. 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.
Mary Wortley Montagu
#16. The doctor has been taught to be interested not in health but in disease. What the public is taught is that health is the cure for disease.
Ashley Montagu
#17. 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
#19. It's in no way my interest (according to the common acceptance of that word) to convince the world of their errors; that is, I shall get nothing from it but the private satisfaction of having done good to mankind, and I know nobody that reckons that satisfaction any part of their interest.
Mary Wortley Montagu
#20. As marriage produces children, so children produce care and disputes; and wrangling.
Mary Wortley Montagu
#22. There have been some medical schools in which somewhere along the assembly line, a faculty member has informed the students, not so much by what he said but by what he did, that there is an intimate relation between curing and caring.
Ashley Montagu
#23. The indifference, callousness, and contempt that so many people exhibit toward animals is evil first because it results in great suffering towards animals, and second because it results in an incalculably great impoverishment of human spirit.
Ashley Montagu
#24. 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
#26. 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.
Mary Wortley Montagu
#27. 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.
Mary Wortley Montagu
#28. A man that is ashamed of passions that are natural and reasonable is generally proud of those that are shameful and silly.
Mary Wortley Montagu
#29. The loving touch, like music, often utters the things that cannot be spoken.
Ashley Montagu
#30. No one should be required to see America for the first time.
Ashley Montagu
#31. Children are the most learning-hungry beings in the world.
Ashley Montagu
#32. The Good Book - one of the most remarkable euphemisms ever coined.
Ashley Montagu
#33. It is not the most lovable individuals who stand more in need of love, but the most unlovable
Ashley Montagu
#34. It is work, work that one delights in, that is the surest guarantor of happiness. But even here it is a work that has to be earned by labor in one's earlier years. One should labor so hard in youth that everything one does subsequently is easy by comparison.
Ashley Montagu
#35. See how that pair of billing doves With open murmurs own their loves And, heedless of censorious eyes, Pursue their unpolluted joys: No fears of future want molest The downy quiet of their nest.
Mary Wortley Montagu
#36. The evidence indicates that woman is, on the whole, biologically superior to man.
Ashley Montagu
#37. Science has proof without any certainty.
Creationists have certainty without any proof.
Ashley Montagu
#38. The deepest personal defeat suffered by human beings is constituted by the difference between what one was capable of becoming and what one has in fact become.
Ashley 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. 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
#43. One goes through school, college, medical school and one's internship learning little or nothing about goodness but a good deal about success.
Ashley Montagu
#44. Remember my unalterable maxim, When we love, we always have something to say.
Mary Wortley Montagu
#45. Religion urges us to fight evil as contrary to the Divine Law. It urges us to combat abject misery, sin and disease because God is. In His name we can work, as we believe in co-operation with Him, since through Him goodness must ultimately prevail.
Lily Montagu
#46. How many thousands ... earnestly seeking what they do not want, while they neglect the real blessings in their possession
I mean the innocent gratification of their senses, which is all we can properly call our own.
Mary Wortley Montagu
#47. 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
#48. Without love, intelligence is dangerous; without intelligence, love is not enough.
Ashley Montagu
#49. 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.
Mary Wortley Montagu
#50. The original mixed ancestry of the Jews and their subsequent history of intermixture with every people among whom they have lived and continue to live ...
Ashley Montagu
#51. Writers of novels and romance in general bring a double loss to their readers; robbing them of their time and money; representing men, manners, and things, that never have been, or are likely to be.
Mary Wortley Montagu
#53. 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
#54. As I approach a second childhood, I endeavor to enter into the pleasures of it.
Mary Wortley Montagu
#55. Love is the supreme form of communication. In the hierarchy of needs, love stands as the supreme developing agent of the humanity of the person. As such, the teaching of love should be the central core of all early childhood curriculum with all other subjects growing naturally out of such teaching.
Ashley Montagu
#57. You certainly can't tell anything from the microscopic structure of the brain whether the person was an idiot or a genius.
Ashley Montagu
#58. It is the function of women to teach men how to be human.
Ashley Montagu
#59. 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.
Mary Wortley Montagu
#60. The world is so full of wonderful things we should all, if we were taught how to appreciate it, be far richer than kings.
Ashley Montagu
#61. Today, while the titular head of the family may still be the father, everyone knows that he is little more than chairman, at most, of the entertainment committee.
Ashley Montagu
#62. It's by what you do that you communicate to others that you are deeply involved in their well being.
Ashley Montagu
#63. 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.
Mary Wortley Montagu
#64. The Eskimos live among ice all their lives but have no single word for ice.
Ashley Montagu
#65. The family unit is the institution for the systematic production of mental illness.
Ashley Montagu
#66. Man is the only 150 pound nonlinear servomechanism that can be wholly reproduced by unskilled labor.
Ashley Montagu
#67. 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.
Mary Wortley Montagu
#68. I believe more follies are committed out of complaisance to the world, than in following our own inclinations.
Mary Wortley Montagu
#70. People are never so near playing the fool as when they think themselves wise.
Mary Wortley Montagu
#71. The idea of "race" represents one of the most dangerous myths of our time.
Ashley Montagu
#73. 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
#74. 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
#75. The one thing that reconciles me to the fact of being a woman is the reflection that it delivers me from the necessity of being married to one.
Mary Wortley Montagu
#76. All education should be directed toward the refinement of the individual's sensibilities in relation not only to one's fellow humans everywhere, but to all living things whatsoever.
Ashley Montagu
#77. I have never had any great esteem for the generality of the fair sex, and my only consolation for being of that gender has been the assurance it gave me of never being married to any one among them.
Mary Wortley Montagu
#78. 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.
Mary Wortley Montagu
#79. Do we have the right to rear animals in order to kill them so that we may feed appetites in which we have been artificially conditioned from childhood?
Ashley Montagu
#81. The government here is entirely in the hands of the army. The Grand Signor [Ottoman Sultan], with all his absolute power, is as much a slave as any of his subjects, and trembles at a janissary's frown.
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
#82. The benefits to the mother of immediate breastfeeding are innumerable, not the least of which after the weariness of labor and birth is the emotional gratification, the feeling of strength, the composure, and the sense of fulfillment that comes with the handling and suckling of the baby.
Ashley Montagu
#84. 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
#85. The measure of man's humanity is the extent and intensity of his love for mankind.
Ashley Montagu
#86. While conscience is our friend, all is at peace; however once it is offended, farewell to a tranquil mind.
Mary Wortley Montagu
#87. 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.
Mary Wortley Montagu
#88. 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.
Mary Wortley Montagu
#89. Intellect without humanity is not good enough ... what the world is suffering from at the present time is not so much an overabundance of intellect as an insufficiency of humanity.
Ashley Montagu
#90. The ability to play is one of the principal criteria of mental health
Ashley Montagu
#91. You will find many a creature by earth, air, and water, that is more beautiful than a woman.
Elizabeth Montagu
#92. Will an intelligent spectator not admire the prodigeous structures of Stone-Henge because he does not know by what law of mechanics they were raised?
Elizabeth Montagu
#95. It is the mark of the cultured man that he is aware of the fact that equality is an ethical and not a biological principle
Ashley Montagu
#96. The outrages of the powerful, the insolence of the rich, scorn of the proud, and malice of the uncharitable, all beating against the broken spirit of the unfortunate.
Elizabeth Montagu
#97. The natural superiority of women is a biological fact, and a socially acknowledged reality.
Ashley Montagu
#98. The familiarities of the gaming-table contribute very much to the decay of politeness ... The pouts and quarrels that naturally arise from disputes must put an end to all complaisance, or even good will towards one another.
Mary Wortley Montagu
#99. The only thing one can do one day one did not do the day before is to die.
Elizabeth Montagu
