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 MontaguThe knowledge of numbers is one of the chief distinctions between us and the brutes.
Mary Wortley MontaguAs I approach a second childhood, I endeavor to enter into the pleasures of it.
Mary Wortley MontaguIt 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'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 MontaguNature is indeed a specious ward, nay, there is a great deal in it if it is properly understood and applied, but I cannot bear to hear people using it to justify what common sense must disavow. Is not Nature modifed by art in many things? Was it not designed to be so? And is it not happy for human society that it is so? Would you like to see your husband let his beard grow, until he would be obliged to put the end of it in his pocket, because this beard is the gift of Nature?
Mary Wortley Montagu