Mary Wollstonecraft Quotes

122 Sourced Quotes

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
We cannot, without depraving our minds, endeavour to please a lover or husband, but in proportion as he pleases us.

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

Mary Wollstonecraft
The endeavor to keep alive any hoary establishment beyond its natural date is often pernicious and always useless.

Mary Wollstonecraft
Society can only be happy and free in proportion as it is virtuous.

Mary Wollstonecraft
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
I am an unfortunate and deserted creature, I look around and I have no relation or friend upon earth. These amiable people to whom I go have never seen me and know little of me. I am full of fears, for if I fail there, I am an outcast in the world forever.

Mary Wollstonecraft
Some women govern their husbands without degrading themselves, because intellect will always govern.

Mary Wollstonecraft
When poverty is more disgraceful than even vice, is not morality cut to the quick?

Mary Wollstonecraft
An air of fashion, which is but a badge of slavery... proves that the soul has not a strong individual character.

Mary Wollstonecraft
To improve both sexes they ought, not only in private families, but in public schools, to be educated together. If marriage be the cement of society, mankind should all be educated after the same model, or the intercourse of the sexes will never deserve the name of fellowship...

Mary Wollstonecraft
An immoderate fondness for dress, for pleasure, and for sway, are the passions of savages; the passions that occupy those uncivilized beings who have not yet extended the dominion of the mind, or even learned to think with the energy necessary to concatenate that abstract train of thought which produces principles.... that women from their education and the present state of civilized life, are in the same condition, cannotbe controverted.

Mary Wollstonecraft
I begin to love this little creature, and to anticipate his birth as a fresh twist to a knot which I do not wish to untie. Men are spoilt by frankness, I believe, yet I must tell you that I love you better than I supposed I did, when I promised to love you forever....I feel it thrilling through my frame, giving and promising pleasure.

Mary Wollstonecraft
In the education of women, the cultivation of the understanding is always subordinate to the acquirement of some corporeal accomplishment...

Mary Wollstonecraft
Modesty is the graceful, calm virtue of maturity; bashfulness the charm of vivacious youth.

Mary Wollstonecraft
Good habits, imperceptibly fixed, are far preferable to the precepts of reason.

Mary Wollstonecraft
At boarding schools of every description, the relaxation of the junior boys is mischief; and of the senior, vice.

Mary Wollstonecraft
At school boys become gluttons and slovens, and, instead of cultivating domestic affections, very early rush into the libertinism which destroys the constitution before it is formed; hardening the heart as it weakens the understanding.

Mary Wollstonecraft
As a sex, women are habitually indolent; and every thing tends to make them so.

Mary Wollstonecraft
I scarcely am able to govern my muscles, when I see a man start with eager, and serious solicitude, to lift a handkerchief, orshut a door, when the lady could have done it herself, had she only moved a pace or two.

Mary Wollstonecraft
The conduct of an accountable being must be regulated by the operations of its own reason...

Mary Wollstonecraft
I must be allowed to add some explanatory remarks to bring the subject home to reason-to that sluggish reason, which supinely takes opinions on trust, and obstinately supports them to spare itself the labour of thinking.

Mary Wollstonecraft
Hereditary property sophisticates the mind, and the unfortunate victims to it... swathed from their birth, seldom exert the locomotive faculty of body or mind; and, thus viewing every thing through one medium, and that a false one, they are unable to discern in what true merit and happiness consist.

Mary Wollstonecraft
In this metropolis a number of lurking leeches infamously gain subsistence by practicing on the credulity of women.

Mary Wollstonecraft
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
We never do any thing well, unless we love it for its own sake.

Mary Wollstonecraft
Men neglect the duties incumbent on man, yet are treated like demi-gods; religion is also separated from morality by a ceremonial veil, yet men wonder that the world is almost, literally speaking, a den of sharpers or oppressors.

Mary Wollstonecraft
Wealth and female softness equally tend to debase mankind!

Mary Wollstonecraft
I think I love most people best when they are in adversity; for pity is one of my prevailing passions.

Mary Wollstonecraft
Women deluded by these sentiments, sometimes boast of their weakness, cunningly obtaining 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: but virtue is sacrificed to temporary gratifications, and the respectability of life to the triumph of an hour.

Mary Wollstonecraft