Mary Wollstonecraft Quotes

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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
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
Affection requires a firmer foundation than sympathy, and few people have a principle of action sufficiently stable to produce rectitude of feeling; for in spite of all the arguments I have heard to justify deviations from duty, I am persuaded that even the most spontaneous sensations are more under the direction of principle than weak people are willing to allow.

Mary Wollstonecraft
If the abstract rights of man will bear discussion and explanation, those of women, by a parity of reasoning, will not shrink from the same test.

Mary Wollstonecraft
Taught from their 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
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
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.

Mary Wollstonecraft
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
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
The two sexes mutually corrupt and improve each other.

Mary Wollstonecraft
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
Let woman share the rights and she will emulate the virtues of man; for she must grow more perfect when emancipated...

Mary Wollstonecraft
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
Judicious books enlarge the mind and improve the heart...

Mary Wollstonecraft
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
I do not wish them [women] to have power over men; but over themselves.

Mary Wollstonecraft
It is a melancholy truth; yet such is the blessed effect of civilization! the most respectable women are the most oppressed; and, unless they have understandings far superiour to the common run of understandings, taking in both sexes, they must, from being treated like contemptible beings, become contemptible.

Mary Wollstonecraft
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. Meek wives are, in general, foolish mothers; wanting their children to love them best, and take their part, in secret, against the father, who is held up as a scarecrow.

Mary Wollstonecraft
What a weak barrier is truth when it stands in the way of an hypothesis!

Mary Wollstonecraft
Every political good carried to the extreme must be productive of evil.

Mary Wollstonecraft
Ah! why do women condescend to receive a degree of attention and respect from strangers different from that reciprocation of civility which the dictates of humanity and the politeness of civilization authorize between man and man? And why do they not discover, when, "in the noon of beauty's power", that they are treated like queens only to be deluded by hollow respect. Confined, then, in cages like the feathered race, they have nothing to do but to plume themselves, and stalk with mock majesty from perch to perch.

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

Mary Wollstonecraft
A slavish bondage to parents cramps every faculty of the mind.

Mary Wollstonecraft
Simplicity and sincerity generally go hand in hand, as both proceed from a love of truth.

Mary Wollstonecraft
To give a sex to mind was not very consistent with the principles of a man [Rousseau] who argued so warmly, and so well, for the immortality of the soul.

Mary Wollstonecraft
Minute attention to propriety stops the growth of virtue.

Mary Wollstonecraft
Men with common minds seldom break through general rules. Prudence is ever the resort of weakness; and they rarely go as far as as they may in any undertaking, who are determined not to go beyond it on any account.

Mary Wollstonecraft
A modest man is steady, an humble man timid, and a vain one presumptuous.

Mary Wollstonecraft
I am a strange compound of weakness and resolution! However, if I must suffer, I will endeavour to suffer in silence. There is certainly a great defect in my mind — my wayward heart creates its own misery — Why I am made thus I cannot tell; and, till I can form some idea of the whole of my existence, I must be content to weep and dance like a child — long for a toy, and be tired of it as soon as I get it.

Mary Wollstonecraft