Mary Wollstonecraft Quotes
At boarding schools of every description, the relaxation of the junior boys is mischief; and of the senior, vice.
You seek for knowledge and wisdom as I once did; and I ardently hope that the gratification of your wishes may not be a serpent to sting you, as mine has been.
I love man as my fellow; but his scepter, real, or usurped, extends not to me, unless the reason of an individual demands my homage; and even then the submission is to reason, and not to man.
Make women rational creatures, and free citizens, and they will quickly become good wives; - that is, if men do not neglect the duties of husbands and fathers.
What terrified me will terrify others; and I need only describe the spectre which had haunted my midnight pillow.
Surely something resides in this heart that is not perishable - and life is more than a dream.
The moon gazed on my midnight labours, while, with unrelaxed and breathless eagerness, I pursued nature to her hiding places.
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.
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.
...once I falsely hoped to meet the beings who, pardoning my outward form, would love me for the excellent qualities which I was capable of unfolding.
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.
Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void, but out of chaos.
The graceful ivy, clasping the oak that supported it, would form a whole in which strength and beauty would be equally conspicuous.
Her countenance was all expression; her eyes were not dark but impenetrably deep; you seemed to discover space after space in their intellectual glance.
The same energy of character which renders a man a daring villain would have rendered him useful in society, had that society been well organized.
How can a rational being be ennobled by any thing that is not obtained by its own exertions?
It is vain to expect virtue from women till they are in some degree independent of men.
I also became a poet, and for one year lived in a Paradise of my own creation; I imagined that I also might obtain a niche in the temple where the names of Homer and Shakespeare are consecrated.
Devil, do you dare approach me? and do you not fear the fierce vengeance of my arm wreaked on your miserable head?
...if I see but one smile on your lips when we meet, occasioned by this or any other exertion of mine, I shall need no other happiness.
It is true, we shall be monsters, cut off from all the world; but on that account we shall be more attached to one another.
... the whole tenour of female education ... tends to render the best disposed romantic and inconstant; and the remainder vain and mean.
I see by your eagerness, and the wonder and hope which your eyes express, my friend, that you expect to be in formed of the secret with which I am acquainted. That cannot be.
When poverty is more disgraceful than even vice, is not morality cut to the quick?
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.
Seek happiness in tranquility and avoid ambition even if it be only the apparently innocent one of distinguishing yourself in science and discoveries.
How mutable are our feelings, and how strange is that clinging love we have of life even in the excess of misery!
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.
Slavery to monarchs and ministers, which the world will be long freeing itself from, and whose deadly grasp stops the progress of the human mind, is not yet abolished.
Children, I grant, should be innocent; but when the epithet is applied to men, or women, it is but a civil term for weakness.
It is time to effect a revolution in female manners - time to restore to them their lost dignity. It is time to separate unchangeable morals from local manners.
When I step into the batter's box, the fans, the noise, the cheers, they all disappear. For that moment, the world is just a battle between me and the pitcher. And more than anything, I want to win.
