Mary Wollstonecraft - Virtue Quotes

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The most perfect education... is such an exercise of the understanding as is best calculated to strengthen the body and form the heart. Or, in other words, to enable the individual to attain such habits of virtue as will render it independent.

Mary Wollstonecraft
It is vain to expect virtue from women till they are in some degree independent of men; nay, it is vain to expect that strength of natural affection which would make them good wives and mothers. Whilst they are absolutely dependent on their husbands they will be cunning, mean, and selfish.

Mary Wollstonecraft
Perhaps the seeds of false-refinement, immorality, and vanity, have ever been shed by the great. Weak, artificial beings, raised above the common wants and defections of their race, in a premature and unnatural manner, undermine the very foundation of virtue, and spread corruption through the whole mass of society!

Mary Wollstonecraft
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
Till women are more rationally educated, the progress in human virtue and improvement in knowledge must receive continual checks.

Mary Wollstonecraft
The preposterous distinction of rank, which render civilization a curse, by dividing the world between voluptuous tyrants and cunning envious dependents, corrupt, almost equally, every class of people, because respectability is not attached to the discharge of the relative duties of life, but to the station, and when the duties are not fulfilled, the affections cannot gain sufficient strength to fortify the virtue of which they are the natural reward. Still there are some loop-holes out of which a man may creep, and dare to think and act for himself; but for a woman it is an herculean task, because she has difficulties peculiar to her sex to overcome, which require almost super-human powers.

Mary Wollstonecraft
The more equality there is established among men, the more virtue and happiness will reign in society.

Mary Wollstonecraft
I see not the shadow of a reason to conclude that their [the sexes'] virtues should differ in respect to their nature. In fact, how can they, if virtue has only one eternal standard? I must therefore, if I reason consequentially, as strenuously maintain that they must have the same simple direction as that there is a God.

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

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
Minute attention to propriety stops the growth of virtue.

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

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
Let us, my dear contemporaries, arise above such narrow prejudices. If wisdom be desirable on its own account, if virtue, to deserve the name, must be founded on knowledge, let us endeavour to strengthen our minds by reflection till our heads become a balance for our hearts...

Mary Wollstonecraft