Mary Wollstonecraft Quotes
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Women have seldom sufficient employment to silence their feelings; a round of little cares, or vain pursuits frittering away all strength of mind and organs, they become naturally only objects of sense.
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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!
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The absurd duty, too often inculcated, of obeying a parent only on account of his being a parent, shackles the mind, and prepares it for a slavish submission to any power but reason.
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I never wanted but your heart--that gone, you have nothing more to give.
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A war, or any wild-goose chase, is, as the vulgar use the phrase, a lucky turn-up of patronage for the minister, whose chief merit is the art of keeping himself in place.
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It appears to me impossible that I should cease to exist, or that this active, restless spirit, equally alive to joy and sorrow, should be only organized dust.
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... we never do any thing well, unless we love it for its own sake.
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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
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Simplicity and sincerity generally go hand in hand, as both proceed from a love of truth.
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Executions, far from being useful examples to the survivors, have, I am persuaded, a quite contrary effect, by hardening the heart they ought to terrify. Besides, the fear of an ignominious death, I believe, never deterred anyone from the commission of a crime, because in committing it the mind is roused to activity about present circumstances.
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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.
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Situation seems to be the mould in which men's characters are formed.
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Women ought to have representatives, instead of being arbitrarily governed without any direct share allowed them in the deliberations of government.
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How can a rational being be ennobled by any thing that is not obtained by its own exertions?
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The power of generalizing ideas, of drawing comprehensive conclusions from individual observations, is the only acquirement, for an immortal being, that really deserves the name of knowledge.
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You know I am not born to tread in the beaten track the peculiar bent of my nature pushes me on.
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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.
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Women are systematically degraded by receiving the trivial attentions which men think it manly to pay to the sex, when, in fact, men are insultingly supporting their own superiority.
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...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.
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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.
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Virtue can only flourish among equals.
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An air of fashion, which is but a badge of slavery ... proves that the soul has not a strong individual character.
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Life cannot be seen by an unmoved spectator.
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We reason deeply, when we forcibly feel.
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Why is our fancy to be appalled by terrific perspectives of a hell beyond the grave?
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A slavish bondage to parents cramps every faculty of the mind
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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.
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Only that education deserves emphatically to be termed cultivation of the mind which teaches young people how to begin to think.
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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.
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The graceful ivy, clasping the oak that supported it, would form a whole in which strength and beauty would be equally conspicuous.
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