Quotes by 18th-century Women

Twinkle, twinkle, little star! How I wonder what you are. Up above the world so high, Like a diamond in the sky...

The tranquil current of domestic happiness affords no materials for narrative.

The best way to get the better of temptation is just to yield to it.

Clementina Stirling Graham

Come, swift-wing'd Fancy, airy maid,
In varied, dazzling vest array'd,
Inspire thy vot'ry's lay;
Grant me thy flow'ry walks to tread,
To range thy summer-painted mead,
Or near thy fountain play.
Now led by thy resistless hand,
Or guided by thy fairy wand,
O'er yet untrodden space;
Or on thy pinions borne along,
The bright Ideas' flitting throngs
Pursue th' aerial race.

Elizabeth Bentley

Even quarrels with one's husband are preferable to the ennui of a solitary existence.

Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte

Forever seeking, never found,
In this wide varied scene;
Sole object of unceasing search,
While in this low terrene.
Yet vain the search, if in the heart
Some lurking passion dwell;
For this will hang with cypress wreath
Retirement's secret cell.
In vain the outward scene is calm,
In vain the world we fly;
If thou, in pure religion's garb,
Thy friendly aid deny.

Of Samuel John and her husband James Boswell:

I have seen many a bear led by a man: but I never before saw a man led by a bear.

Margaret Boswell

Women, rouse yourselves! The tocsin of reason resounds through the whole universe: recognize your rights. The powerful empire of nature is no longer surrounded by prejudices, fanaticism, superstition and lies.

Olympe de Gouges

Coercive measures may have a restraining effect for a time, but can never subdue an untractable spirit: it is only by engaging the affections and enlarging the understanding, that the heart can be meliorated or principles be formed; for like a bow forcibly bent, the mind recoils from oppression with elastic power.

A Universalist, your heart cannot but dilate, and your affections widen, until the divine expansion, like the ambient atmosphere, embraces every form, which is acted upon by an immortal spirit.

Judith Sargent Murray

Admonition never sinks so deeply on the heart as in the hour of trial; young, amiable as you are, life teems, I doubt not, with various blessings for you--blessings which you will know how to value properly, for early disappointment is the nurse of wisdom.

Regina Maria Roche

If the man may preach, because the Saviour died for him, why not the woman? Seeing he died for her also. Is he not a whole Saviour, instead of a half one? As those who hold it wrong for a woman to preach, would seem to make it appear.

None but the estimable shall hear from me that I esteem them. The whole world is entitled to my courtesy, but greater tribute than that must be earned through virtuous acts.

Sophie von La Roche

August 'twas the twenty-fifth,
Seventeen hundred and forty-six;
The Indians did in ambush lay,
Some very valiant men to slay,
The names of whom I'll not leave out.
Samuel Allen like a hero fout
And though he was so brave and bold,
His face no more shall we behold.

I wonder if Eve could write letters in Paradise! But, poor Eve, she had no one to write to - no one to whom to tell what Eden was, no beloved child to whom her love traveled through any or all space. Poor Eve!

Catharine Sedgwick

Men of an amiable, yielding temper, willing to take the lowest place; to be least of all; and the servants to all...who live near God, and who are willing to suffer all things for Christ's sake without being proud of it - these are the men we need.

Ann Hasseltine Judson

Perhaps I'm most the extraordinary woman in the world.

It is by surmounting difficulties, not by sinking under them that we discover our fortitude.

Hannah Webster Foster

I am not disposed to form a very favorable idea of Chemistry, nor do I expect to derive much entertainment from it. I prefer the sciences which exhibit nature on a grand scale, to those that are confined to the minutiae of petty details.

Pope has elegantly said a perfect woman's but a softer man. And if we take in the consideration, that there can be but one rule of moral excellence for beings made of the same materials, organized after the same manner, and subjected to similar laws of Nature, we must either agree with Mr. Pope, or we must reverse the proposition, and say, that a perfect man is a woman formed after a coarser mold.

Catharine Macaulay

Power, when invested in the hands of knaves or fools, generally is the source of tyranny...

Charlotte Charke

I shall not say why and how I became, at the age of fifteen, the mistress of the Earl of Craven.

Harriette Wilson

My mother, who disliked me from the bottom of her heart, deliberately did everything, it seemed, that would strengthen and intensify my unbounded passion for freedom and a military life. She wouldn't let me walk in the garden. She wouldn't let me be away from her for even half an hour: I had to sit in her bedroom and make lace. She herself taught me to sew, to knit, and seeing that I had neither the desire nor the ability for this sort of work, that in my hands everything tore or broke, she became angry, lost control of herself, and beat me very painfully on the hands.

Nadezhda Durova

Well, but the joy to see my works in print!
Myself too pictur'd in a mezzo-tint!

Mary Jones (poet)

After us the deluge.

Madame de Pompadour