Mary Wollstonecraft quotes: top famous quotes and sayings by Mary Wollstonecraft

Top Mary Wollstonecraft Quotes

Browse top 70 most favorite famous quotes and sayings by Mary Wollstonecraft.

Favorite Mary Wollstonecraft Quotes

1. "I never wanted but your heart--that gone, you have nothing more to give." ~ Mary Wollstonecraft

2. "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

3. "The conduct and manners of women, in fact, evidently prove that their minds are not in a healthy state; for, like the flowers which are planted in too rich a soil, strenght state; usefulness are sacrificed to beauty; and the flaunting leaves, after having pleased a fastidious eye, fade, disregarded on the stalk, long before the season when they ought to have arrived at maturity." ~ Mary Wollstonecraft

4. "They may be convenient slaves, but slavery will have its constant effect, degrading the master and the abject dependent." ~ Mary Wollstonecraft

5. "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

6. "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

7. "She was ashamed at feeling disappointed; and began to reflect, as an excuse to herself, on the little objects which attract attention when there is nothing to divert the mind; and how difficult it was for women to avoid growing romantic, who have no active duties or pursuits." ~ Mary Wollstonecraft

8. "It is easier to list modes of behaviour that are required or forbidden than to set reason to work; but once the mind has been stored with useful knowledge and strengthened by being used, the regulation of the behaviour may safely be left to its guidance without the aid of formal rules." ~ Mary Wollstonecraft

9. "Yet women, whose minds are not enlarged by cultivation, or in whom the natural selfishness of sensibility hasn't been expanded by reflection, are very unfit to manage a family, because they always stretch their power and use tyranny to maintain a superiority that rests on nothing but the arbitrary distinction of fortune." ~ Mary Wollstonecraft

10. "And having no fear of the devil beforemy 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

11. "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

12. "[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

13. "No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks." ~ Mary Wollstonecraft

14. "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." ~ Mary Wollstonecraft

15. "Strengthen the female mind by enlarging it, and there will be an end to blind obedience." ~ Mary Wollstonecraft

16. "The beginning is always today." ~ Mary Wollstonecraft

17. "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

18. "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

19. "Virtue can only flourish among equals." ~ Mary Wollstonecraft

20. "The being cannot be termed rational or virtuous, who obeys any authority, but that of reason." ~ Mary Wollstonecraft

21. "It appears to me impossible that I should cease to exist, or that this active, restless spirit, equally alive to joy and sorrow, should be only organized dust." ~ Mary Wollstonecraft

22. "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

23. "It is justice, not charity, that is wanting in the world." ~ Mary Wollstonecraft

24. "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." ~ Mary Wollstonecraft

25. "In fact, it is a farce to call any being virtuous whose virtues do not result from the exercise of its own reason." ~ Mary Wollstonecraft

26. "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

27. "Why is our fancy to be appalled by terrific perspectives of a hell beyond the grave?" ~ Mary Wollstonecraft

28. "In every age there has been a stream of popular opinion that has carried all before it, and given a family character, as it were, to the century." ~ Mary Wollstonecraft

29. "Friendship is a serious affection; the most sublime of all affections, because it is founded on principle, and cemented by time." ~ Mary Wollstonecraft

30. "...men endeavor to sink us still lower, merely to render us alluring objects for a moment; and women, intoxicated by the adoration which men, under the influence of their senses, pay them, do not seek to obtain a durable interest in their hearts, or to become the friends of the fellow creatures who find amusement in their society." ~ Mary Wollstonecraft

31. "... judicious books enlarge the mind and improve the heart ..." ~ Mary Wollstonecraft

32. "But what a weak barrier is truth when it stands in the way of an hypothesis!" ~ Mary Wollstonecraft

33. "My husband - my king." ~ Mary Wollstonecraft

34. "Make them free, and they will quickly become wise and virtous, as men become more so; for the improvement must be mutual, or the injustice which one half of the human race are obliged to submit to, retorting on their oppressors, the virtue of men will be worm-eaten by the insect whom he keeps under his feet" ~ Mary Wollstonecraft

35. "But women are very differently situated with respect to eachother - for they are all rivals (...) Is it then surprising that when the sole ambition of woman centres in beauty, and interest gives vanity additional force, perpetual rivalships should ensue? They are all running the same race, and would rise above the virtue of morals, if they did not view each other with a suspicious and even envious eye." ~ Mary Wollstonecraft

36. "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

37. "The highest branch of solitary amusement is reading; but even in the choice of books the fancy is first employed; for in reading, the heart is touched, till its feelings are examined by the understanding, and the ripening of reason regulate the imagination. This is the work of years, and the most important of all employments." ~ Mary Wollstonecraft

38. "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

39. "For any kind of reading I think better than leaving a blank still a blank, because the mind must receive a degree of enlargement and obtain a little strength by a slight exertion of its thinking powers; besides, even the productions that are only addressed to the imagination, raise the reader a little above the gross gratification of appetites, to which the mind has not given a shade of delicacy." ~ Mary Wollstonecraft

40. "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." ~ Mary Wollstonecraft

41. "Every glance afforded colouring for the picture she was delineating on her heart." ~ Mary Wollstonecraft

42. "If we pant after higher improvement and higher attainments, it is not sufficient to view ourselves as we suppose that we are viewed by others. . . . Because each by-stander may have his own prejudices, beside the prejudices of his age or country. We should rather endeavor to view ourselves as we suppose that Being views [us]." ~ Mary Wollstonecraft

43. "Dr. Gregory goes much further; he actually recommends dissimulation, and advises an innocent girl to give the lie to her feelings, and not dance with spirit, when gaiety of would make her feet eloquent without making her gestures immodest. In the name of truth and common sense, why should not one woman acknowledge that she can take more exercise then another?" ~ Mary Wollstonecraft

44. "Thinking it selfish to dwell on her own sufferings, when in the midst of wretches, who had not only lost all that endears life, but their very selves, her imagination was occupied with melancholy earnestness to trace the mazes of misery, through which so many wretches must have passed to this gloomy receptacle of disjointed souls, to the grand source of human corruption." ~ Mary Wollstonecraft

45. "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

46. "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

47. "when two young people marry—even virtuous ones—it might also be fine if some circumstance checked their passion;if the memory of some prior attachment or disappointed affection made it, on one side at least, a match based onesteem rather than love. That would have them looking beyond the present moment, trying to make the whole of lifeworthwhile by making plans to regulate a friendship which ought to last until death." ~ Mary Wollstonecraft

48. "Svijet ne mogu promatrati oni koje ništa ne može ganuti.." ~ Mary Wollstonecraft

49. "Taxes on the very necessaries of life, enable an endless tribe of idle princes and princesses to pass with stupid pomp before a gaping crowd, who almost worship the very parade which costs them so dear." ~ Mary Wollstonecraft

50. "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

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I have a book of buildings from 25,000 BC. These are huts built out of mammoth bones. These buildings were beautifully made, from the bones of the body into shelter."
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