Top 100 Mary Wollstonecraft Quotes
#1. England and America owe their liberty to commerce, which created a new species of power to undermine the feudal system. But let them beware of the consequences: the tyranny of wealth is still more galling and debasing than that of rank.
Mary Wollstonecraft
#2. I do earnestly wish to see the distinction of sex confounded in society, unless where love animates the behaviour.
Mary Wollstonecraft
#3. A modest man is steady, an humble man timid, and a vain one presumptuous.
Mary Wollstonecraft
#4. The last man! Yes I may well describe that solitary being's feelings, feeling myself as the last relic of a beloved race, my companions extinct before me ...
Mary Wollstonecraft
#6. Either nature has made a great difference between man and man, or that the world is not yet anywhere near to being fully civilized.
Mary Wollstonecraft
#8. An air of fashion, which is but a badge of slavery ... proves that the soul has not a strong individual character.
Mary Wollstonecraft
#9. I must be allowed to add some explanatory remarks to bring the subject home to reason-to that sluggish reason, which supinely takes opinions on trust, and obstinately supports them to spare itself the labour of thinking.
Mary Wollstonecraft
#10. What but a pestilential vapour can hover over society when its chief director is only instructed in the invention of crimes, or the stupid routine of childish ceremonies?
Mary Wollstonecraft
#11. What, but the rapacity of the only men who exercised their reason, the priests, secured such vast property to the church, when a man gave his perishable substance to save himself from the dark torments of purgatory.
Mary Wollstonecraft
#12. Surely something resides in this heart that is not perishable - and life is more than a dream.
Mary Wollstonecraft
#15. Men neglect the duties incumbent on man, yet are treated like demi-gods; religion is also separated from morality by a ceremonial veil, yet men wonder that the world is almost, literally speaking, a den of sharpers or oppressors.
Mary Wollstonecraft
#16. I like to see your eyes praise me and, during such recitals, there are interruptions, not ungrateful to the heart, when the honey that drops from the lips is not merely words.
Mary Wollstonecraft
#17. When any prevailing prejudice is attacked, the wise will consider, and leave the narrow-minded to rail with thoughtless vehemence at innovation.
Mary Wollstonecraft
#18. Every political good carried to the extreme must be productive of evil.
Mary Wollstonecraft
#20. The graceful ivy, clasping the oak that supported it, would form a whole in which strength and beauty would be equally conspicuous.
Mary Wollstonecraft
#22. [...] and if then women do not resign the arbitrary power of beauty - they will prove that they have less mind than man.
Mary Wollstonecraft
#23. My own sex, I hope, will excuse me, if I treat them like rational creatures, instead of flattering their fascinating graces, and viewing them as if they were in a state of perpetual childhood, unable to stand alone.
Mary Wollstonecraft
#25. The greater number of people take their opinions on trust, to avoid the trouble of exercising their own minds, and these indolent beings naturally adhere to the letter, rather than the spirit of a law, divine or human.
Mary Wollstonecraft
#26. Only that education deserves emphatically to be termed cultivation of the mind which teaches young people how to begin to think.
Mary Wollstonecraft
#27. I then supped with my companions, with whom I was soon after to part for ever - always a most melancholly, death-like idea - a sort of separation of soul; for all the regret which follows those from whom fate separates us, seems to be something torn from ourselves.
Mary Wollstonecraft
#28. And this homage to women's attractions has distorted their understanding to
such an extent that almost all the civilized women of the present century are anxious only to inspire love, when they ought to have the nobler aim of getting respect for their abilities and virtues.
Mary Wollstonecraft
#29. I love man as my fellow; but his scepter, real, or usurped, extends not to me, unless the reason of an individual demands my homage; and even then the submission is to reason, and not to man.
Mary Wollstonecraft
#30. I do not wish them [women] to have power over men; but over themselves.
Mary Wollstonecraft
#31. Nothing, I am sure, calls forth the faculties so much as the being obliged to struggle with the world.
Mary Wollstonecraft
#33. How frequently has melancholy and even misanthropy taken possession of me, when the world has disgusted me, and friends have proven unkind. I have then considered myself as a particle broken off from the grand mass of mankind.
Mary Wollstonecraft
#35. Love from its very nature must be transitory. To seek for a secret that would render it constant would be as wild a search as for the philosopher's stone or the grand panacea: and the discovery would be equally useless, or rather pernicious to mankind. The most holy band of society is friendship.
Mary Wollstonecraft
#36. The birthright of man ... is such a degree of liberty, civil and religious, as is compatible with the liberty of every other individual with whom he is united in a social compact.
Mary Wollstonecraft
#37. Friendship is a serious affection; the most sublime of all affections, because it is founded on principle, and cemented by time.
Mary Wollstonecraft
#38. Women are systematically degraded by receiving the trivial attentions which men think it manly to pay to their sex, when, in fact, men are insultingly supporting their own superiority.
Mary Wollstonecraft
#40. Considering the length of time that women have been dependent, is it surprising that some of them hug their chains, and fawn like the spaniel?
Mary Wollstonecraft
#41. Weakness may excite tenderness, and gratify the arrogant pride of man; but the lordly caresses of a protector will not gratify a noble mind that pants for, and deserves to be respected. Fondness is a poor substitute for friendship.
Mary Wollstonecraft
#43. Thus do we wish as we float down the stream of life, whilst chance does more to gratify our desire for knowledge than our best-laid plans.
Mary Wollstonecraft
#45. I never wanted but your heart
that gone, you have nothing more to give.
Mary Wollstonecraft
#46. It is vain to expect virtue from women till they are in some degree independent of men.
Mary Wollstonecraft
#47. They are the men of fancy, the favourites of the sex, who outwardly respect, and inwardly despise the weak creatures whom they thus sport with.
Mary Wollstonecraft
#48. The more equality there is established among men, the more virtue and happiness will reign in society.
Mary Wollstonecraft
#51. True sensibility, the sensibility which is the auxiliary of virtue, and the soul of genius, is in society so occupied with the feelings of others, as scarcely to regard its own sensations.
Mary Wollstonecraft
#52. The same energy of character which renders a man a daring villain would have rendered him useful in society, had that society been well organized.
Mary Wollstonecraft
#53. I am an unfortunate and deserted creature, I look around and I have no relation or friend upon earth. These amiable people to whom I go have never seen me and know little of me. I am full of fears, for if I fail there, I am an outcast in the world forever.
Mary Wollstonecraft
#54. Those who are bold enough to advance before the age they live in ... must learn to brave censure.
Mary Wollstonecraft
#55. Let us, my dear contemporaries, arise above such narrow prejudices. If wisdom be desirable on its own account, if virtue, to deserve the name, must be founded on knowledge, let us endeavour to strengthen our minds by reflection till our heads become a balance for our hearts ...
Mary Wollstonecraft
#56. Pygmalion formed an ivory maid, and longed for an informing soul. She, on the contrary, combined all the qualities of a hero's mind, and fate presented a statue in which she might enshrine them.
Mary Wollstonecraft
#57. Let their faculties have room to unfold, and their virtues to gain strength, and then determine where the whole sex must stand in the intellectual scale.
Mary Wollstonecraft
#58. I think I love most people best when they are in adversity; for pity is one of my prevailing passions.
Mary Wollstonecraft
#59. Maria was not permitted to walk in the garden; but sometimes, from her window, she turned her eyes from the gloomy walls, in which she pined life away, on the poor wretches who strayed along the walks, and contemplated the most terrific of ruins - that of a human soul.
Mary Wollstonecraft
#60. In the education of women, the cultivation of the understanding is always subordinate to the acquirement of some corporeal accomplishment ...
Mary Wollstonecraft
#61. Some women govern their husbands without degrading themselves, because intellect will always govern.
Mary Wollstonecraft
#62. The whole tenour of female education ... tends to render the best disposed romantic and inconstant; and the remainder vain and mean.
Mary Wollstonecraft
#63. [I]f we revert to history, we shall find that the women who have distinguished themselves have neither been the most beautiful nor the most gentle of their sex.
Mary Wollstonecraft
#64. The man who can be contented to live with a pretty and useful companion who has no mind has lost in voluptuous gratifications a taste for more refined pleasures; he has never felt the calm and refreshing satisfaction ... of being loved by someone who could understand him.
Mary Wollstonecraft
#65. Why is our fancy to be appalled by terrific perspectives of a hell beyond the grave?
Mary Wollstonecraft
#66. If women be educated for dependence; that is, to act according to the will of another fallible being, and submit, right or wrong, to power, where are we to stop?
Mary Wollstonecraft
#67. I write in a hurry, because the little one, who has been sleeping a long time, begins to call for me. Poor thing! when I am sad, I lament that all my affections grow on me, till they become too strong for my peace, though they all afford me snatches of exquisite enjoyment.
Mary Wollstonecraft
#68. It is the preservation of the species, not of individuals, which appears to be the design of Deity throughout the whole of nature.
Mary Wollstonecraft
#69. They may be convenient slaves, but slavery will have its constant effect, degrading the master and the abject dependent.
Mary Wollstonecraft
#70. Make women rational creatures, and free citizens, and they will quickly become good wives; - that is, if men do not neglect the duties of husbands and fathers.
Mary Wollstonecraft
#71. The conduct of an accountable being must be regulated by the operations of its own reason ...
Mary Wollstonecraft
#72. How can a rational being be ennobled by any thing that is not obtained by its own exertions?
Mary Wollstonecraft
#73. When man, governed by reasonable laws, enjoys his natural freedom, let him despise woman, if she do not share it with him.
Mary Wollstonecraft
#75. To improve both sexes they ought, not only in private families, but in public schools, to be educated together. If marriage be the cement of society, mankind should all be educated after the same model, or the intercourse of the sexes will never deserve the name of fellowship ...
Mary Wollstonecraft
#76. A war, or any wild-goose chase, is, as the vulgar use the phrase, a lucky turn-up of patronage for the minister, whose chief merit is the art of keeping himself in place.
Mary Wollstonecraft
#77. Modesty is the graceful, calm virtue of maturity; bashfulness the charm of vivacious youth.
Mary Wollstonecraft
#78. It is time to effect a revolution in female manners - time to restore to them their lost dignity - and make them, as a part of the human species, labour by reforming themselves to reform the world. It is time to separate unchangeable morals from local manners.
Mary Wollstonecraft
#79. Children, I grant, should be innocent; but when the epithet is applied to men, or women, it is but a civil term for weakness.
Mary Wollstonecraft
#80. And, perhaps, in the education of both sexes, the most difficult task is so to adjust instruction as not to narrow the understanding, whilst the heart is warmed by the generous juices of spring ... nor to dry up the feelings by employing the mind in investigations remote from life.
Mary Wollstonecraft
#81. The flexible muscles growing daily more rigid give character to the countenance ; that is, they trace the operations of the mind with the iron pen of fate, and tell us not only what powers are within, but how they have been employed.
Mary Wollstonecraft
#82. But let me now stop; I may be a little partial, and view every thing with the jaundiced eye of melancholy - for I am sad - and have cause.
Mary Wollstonecraft
#83. I begin to love this creature, and to anticipate her birth as a fresh twist to a knot, which I do not wish to untie.
Mary Wollstonecraft
#84. Men and women must be educated, in a great degree, by the opinions and manners of the society they live in.
Mary Wollstonecraft
#85. After attacking the sacred majesty of Kings, I shall scarcely excite surprise by adding my firm persuasion that every profession, in which great subordination of rank constitutes its power, is highly injurious to morality.
Mary Wollstonecraft
#86. The endeavor to keep alive any hoary establishment beyond its natural date is often pernicious and always useless.
Mary Wollstonecraft
#87. . . . so many fond mothers spoil their children, and has made it questionable whether negligence or indulgence be most hurtful: but I am inclined to think, that the latter has done most harm.
Mary Wollstonecraft
#88. As a sex, women are habitually indolent; and every thing tends to make them so.
Mary Wollstonecraft
#89. Let woman share the rights and she will emulate the virtues of man; for she must grow more perfect when emancipated ...
Mary Wollstonecraft
#90. It appears necessary to go back to first principles in search of the most simple truths, and to dispute with some prevailing prejudice every inch of ground.
Mary Wollstonecraft
#91. Women ought to have representatives, instead of being arbitrarily governed without any direct share allowed them in the deliberations of government.
Mary Wollstonecraft
#92. Women all want to be ladies, which is simply to have nothing to do, but listlessly to go they scarcely care where, for they cannot tell what.
Mary Wollstonecraft
#93. A magic lamp now seemed to be suspended in Maria's prison, and fairy landscapes flitted round the gloomy walls, late so blank. Rushing from the depth of despair, on the seraph wing of hope, she found herself happy. - She was beloved, and every emotion was rapturous.
Mary Wollstonecraft
#94. And having no fear of the devil before
my eyes, I venture to call this a suggestion of reason, instead of resting my weakness on the broad shoulders of the first seducer of my frail sex.
Mary Wollstonecraft
#95. Good habits, imperceptibly fixed, are far preferable to the precepts of reason.
Mary Wollstonecraft
#96. True happiness must arise from well-regulated affections, and an affection includes a duty.
Mary Wollstonecraft
#97. For years I have endeavored to calm an impetuous tide
laboring to make my feelings take an orderly course
it was striving against the stream.
Mary Wollstonecraft
#98. The absurd duty, too often inculcated, of obeying a parent only on account of his being a parent, shackles the mind, and prepares it for a slavish submission to any power but reason.
Mary Wollstonecraft
#99. The most perfect education ... is such an exercise of the understanding as is best calculated to strengthen the body and form the heart. Or, in other words, to enable the individual to attain such habits of virtue as will render it independent.
Mary Wollstonecraft
#100. Friendship and domestic happiness are continually praised; yet how little is there of either in the world, because it requires more cultivation of mind to keep awake affection, even in our own hearts, than the common run of people suppose.
Mary Wollstonecraft
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