Mary Wollstonecraft Quotes
Good habits, imperceptibly fixed, are far preferable to the precepts of reason.
Mary Wollstonecraft
(Original Stories from Real Life, 1788)
Virtue can only flourish amongst equals.
We reason deeply, when we forcibly feel.
It is justice, not charity, that is wanting in the world.
We never do any thing well, unless we love it for its own sake.
I do not wish women to have power over men; but over themselves.
Every political good carried to the extreme must be productive of evil.
Situation seems to be the mould in which men's characters are formed.
A modest man is steady, an humble man timid, and a vain one presumptuous.
As a sex, women are habitually indolent; and everything tends to make them so.
Surely something resides in this heart that is not perishable, and life is more than a dream.
Modesty is the graceful, calm virtue of maturity; bashfulness the charm of vivacious youth.
No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks.
The being cannot be termed rational or virtuous, who obeys any authority, but that of reason.
How can a rational being be ennobled by any thing that is not obtained by its own exertions?
Nothing, I am sure, calls forth the faculties so much as the being obliged to struggle with the world.
You know I am not born to tread in the beaten track — the peculiar bent of my nature pushes me on.
True politeness is a polish, not a varnish; and should rather be acquired by observation than admonition.
The endeavor to keep alive any hoary establishment beyond its natural date is often pernicious and always useless.
Friendship is a serious affection; the most sublime of all affections, because it is founded on principle, and cemented by time.
The same energy of character which renders a man a daring villain would have rendered him useful to society, had that society been well organized.
Taught from infancy that beauty is woman's sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison.
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?
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.
To be a good mother - a woman must have sense, and that independence of mind which few women possess who are taught to depend entirely on their husbands.
Slavery to monarchs and ministers, which the world will be long freeing itself from, and whose deadly grasp stops the progress of the human mind, is not yet abolished.
The power of generalizing ideas, of drawing comprehensive conclusions from individual observations, is the only acquirement, for an immortal being, that really deserves the name of knowledge.
Affection requires a firmer foundation than sympathy... I am persuaded that even the most spontaneous sensations are more under the direction of principle than weak people are willing to allow.
Independence I have long considered as the grand blessing of life, the basis of every virtue; and independence I will ever secure by contracting my wants, though I were to live on a barren heath.
Women, sometimes boasting of their weakness, cunningly obtain power by playing on the weakness of men. And they may well glory in their illicit sway; for, like Turkish bashaws, they have more real power than their masters.