Margaret Cavendish Quotes
Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, was an English philosopher, poet, and prose writer and the first woman to attend a meeting of the Royal Society. Working in the thick of the seventeenth-century philosophical debates, she developed an original materialist and vitalist natural philosophy in which all of nature, including matter, is rational and self-moving. The quotes below are attributed to Margaret Cavendish, organized by topic.
Browse Margaret Cavendish by topic
Margaret Cavendish on Freedom
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Attributed to Margaret Cavendish:
“If I cannot be Henry the Fifth, I will be Margaret the First.”
Margaret Cavendish on Knowledge
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Attributed to Margaret Cavendish:
“All knowledge is gained through reflection on experience.”
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“The weight of Atomes', in The Atomic Poems of Margaret (Lucas) Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, from her Poems, and Fancies, 1653, an electronic edition. Edited with an introduction by Leigh Tillman Partington.”
If Atomes are as small, as small can bee, They must in quantity of Matter all agree. -
“The spider-men came first, and presented her Majesty with a table full of mathematical points, lines and figures of all sorts of squares, circles, triangles, and the like; which the Empress, notwithstanding that she had a very ready wit, and quick apprehension, could not understand; but the more she endeavoured to learn, the more was she confounded”
Description of a New World, Called The Blazing World (1666) -
“Riches is not what we have, but what we enjoy.”
An Oration against Usurers and Money-Hoarders", Orations of Divers Sorts (1668), pt. x, p. 224
Margaret Cavendish on Mind
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Attributed to Margaret Cavendish:
“Thought is matter; and matter, rightly understood, is rational.”
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Attributed to Margaret Cavendish:
“Reason is corporeal, for it acts in matter and through matter.”
Margaret Cavendish on Nature
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Attributed to Margaret Cavendish:
“Nature is one infinite body, made of an infinite number of parts.”
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“If Atomes are as small, as small can bee, They must in quantity of Matter all agree.”
The weight of Atomes', in The Atomic Poems of Margaret (Lucas) Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, from her Poems, and Fancies, 1653, an electronic edition. Edited with an introduction by Leigh Tillman Partington. -
“Description of a New World, Called The Blazing World (1666)”
The spider-men came first, and presented her Majesty with a table full of mathematical points, lines and figures of all sorts of squares, circles, triangles, and the like; which the Empress, notwithstanding that she had a very ready wit, and quick apprehension, could not understand; but the more she endeavoured to learn, the more was she confounded
Margaret Cavendish on Virtue
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Attributed to Margaret Cavendish:
“I had rather die in the adventure of noble achievements than live in obscure and sluggish security.”