Mary Astell Quotes

46 Sourced Quotes

Hitherto I have courted Truth with a kind of Romantick Passion, in spite of all Difficulties and Discouragements: for knowledge is thought so unnecessary an Accomplishment for a Woman, that few will give themselves the Trouble to assist us in the Attainment of it.

Mary Astell
Your glass will not do you half so much service as a serious reflection on your own minds.

Mary Astell
That Man indeed can never be good at heart, who is full of himself and his own Endowments.

Mary Astell
We all agree that its fit to be as Happy as we can, and we need no Instructor to teach us this Knowledge, 'tis born with us, and is inseparable from our Being, but we very much need to be Inform'd what is the true Way to Happiness.

Mary Astell
Friendship is a virtue which comprehends all the rest; none being fit for this, who is not adorned with every other virtue.

Mary Astell
Their sophistry I can control
Who falsely say that women have no soul.

Mary Astell
To plead for the Oppress'd and to defend the Weak seem'd to me a generous undertaking; for tho' it may be secure, 'tis not always Honourable to run over to the strongest party.

Mary Astell
To all the rest of his Absurdities, (for vice is always unreasonable,) he adds one more, who expects that Vertue from another which he won't practise himself.

Mary Astell
How can you be content to be in the world like tulips in a garden, to make a fine show, and be good for nothing.

Mary Astell
It is not the Head but the Heart that is the Seat of Atheism.

Mary Astell
Happy am I who out of danger sit,
Can see and pity them who wade thro it;
Need take no thought my treasure to dispose,
What I ne'er had I cannot fear to lose.

Mary Astell
Marry for Love, an Heroick Action, which makes a mighty noise in the World, partly because of its rarity, and partly in regard of its extravagancy.

Mary Astell
How can a Man respect his Wife when he has a contemptible Opinion of her and her Sex?

Mary Astell
We may not commit a lesser Sin under pretence to avoid a greater, but we may, nay we ought to endure the greatest Pain and Grief rather than commit the least Sin.

Mary Astell
None of God's Creatures absolutely consider'd are in their own Nature Contemptible; the meanest Fly, the poorest Insect has its Use and Vertue.

Mary Astell
Women need not take up with mean things, since (if they are not wanting to themselves) they are capable of the best.

Mary Astell
Fetters of gold are still fetters, and the softest lining can never make them so easy as liberty.

Mary Astell
If none were to Marry, but Men of strict Vertue and Honour, I doubt the World would be but thinly peopled.

Mary Astell
Every Body has so good an Opinion of their own Understanding as to think their own way the best.

Mary Astell
The design of Rhetoric is to remove those Prejudices that lie in the way of Truth, to Reduce the Passions to the Government of Reasons; to place our Subject in a Right Light, and excite our Hearers to a due consideration of it.

Mary Astell
If God had not intended that Women shou'd use their Reason, He wou'd not have given them any, 'for He does nothing in vain.

Mary Astell
The Steps to Folly as well as Sin are gradual, and almost imperceptible, and when we are once on the Decline, we go down without taking notice on't.

Mary Astell
If a Woman can neither Love nor Honour, she does ill in promising to Obey.

Mary Astell
The Relation we bear to the Wisdom of the Father, the Son of His Love, gives us indeed a dignity which otherwise we have no pretence to. It makes us something, something considerable even in God's Eyes.

Mary Astell
If marriage be such a blessed state, how comes it, may you say, that there are so few happy marriages? Now in answer to this, it is not to be wondered that so few succeed; we should rather be surprised to find so many do, considering how imprudently men engage, the motives they act by, and the very strange conduct they observe throughout.

Mary Astell