Mary Wollstonecraft Quotes
The world to me was a secret, which I desired to discover; to her it was a vacancy, which she sought to people with imaginations of her own.
How mutable are our feelings, and how strange is that clinging love we have of life even in the excess of misery!
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.
Ah! it is well for the unfortunate to be resigned, but for the guilty there is no peace.
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.
Women are degraded by the propensity to enjoy the present moment, and, at last, despise the freedom which they have not sufficient virtue to struggle to attain.
True happiness must arise from well-regulated affections, and an affection includes a duty.
Some women govern their husbands without degrading themselves, because intellect will always govern.
When a man seduces a woman, it should, I think, be termed a left-handed marriage.
If women be educated for dependence; that is, to act according to the will of another fallible being, and submit, right or wrong, to power, where are we to stop?
From the respect paid to property flow, as from a poisoned fountain, most of the evils and vices which render this world such a dreary scene to the contemplative mind.
In fact, it is a farce to call any being virtuous whose virtues do not result from the exercise of its own reason.
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.
Why is our fancy to be appalled by terrific perspectives of a hell beyond the grave?
Thus strangely are our souls constructed, and by slight ligaments are we bound to prosperity and ruin.
Curiosity, earnest research to learn the hidden laws of nature, gladness akin to rapture, as they unfolded to me, are among the earliest sensations I can remember.
It would be an endless task to trace the variety of meannesses, cares, and sorrows into which women are plunged by the prevailing opinion that they were created rather to feel than reason.
Invention consists in the capacity of seizing on the capabilities of a subject, and in the power of moulding and fashioning ideas suggested to it.
None but those who have experienced them can conceive of the enticements of science.
There is something so different in Venice from any other place in the world, that you leave at once all accustomed habits and everyday sights to enter an enchanted garden.
Unhappy man! Do you share my maddness? Have you drunk also of the intoxicating draught? Hear me; let me reveal my tale, and you will dash the cup from your lips!
And the violet lay dead while the odour flew On the wings of the wind o'er the waters blue.
I saw and heard of none like me. Was I then a monster, a blot upon the earth, from which all men fled, and whom all men disowned?
When any prevailing prejudice is attacked, the wise will consider, and leave the narrow-minded to rail with thoughtless vehemence at innovation.
Women all want to be ladies, which is simply to have nothing to do, but listlessly to go they scarcely care where, for they cannot tell what.
In this metropolis a number of lurking leeches infamously gain subsistence by practicing on the credulity of women.
I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend. Make me happy, and I shall again be virtuous.
With how many things are we on the brink of becoming acquainted, if cowardice or carelessness did not restrain our inquiries.
Oh! Stars and clouds and winds, ye are all about to mock me; if ye really pity me, crush sensation and memory; let me become as nought; but if not, depart, depart, and leave me in darkness.
I cherished hope, it is true, but it vanished when my person reflected . . .
Our faults are apt to assume giant and exaggerated forms to our eyes in youth.
Satan has his companions, fellow-devils, to admire and encourage him; but I am solitary and detested.
The different accidents of life are not so changeable as the feelings of human nature.
...we are unfashioned creatures, but half made up, if one wiser, better, dearer than ourselves - such a friend ought to be - do not lend his aid to perfectionate our weak and faulty natures.
The time at length arrives, when grief is rather an indulgence than a necessity and the smile that plays upon the lips, although it may be deemed a sacrilege, is not banished.
Supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavor to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world.
Nothing, I am sure, calls forth the faculties so much as the being obliged to struggle with the world.
I think I love most people best when they are in adversity; for pity is one of my prevailing passions.
But soon, I shall die, and what I now feel be no longer felt. Soon these burning miseries will be extinct.
In my joy I thrust my hand into the live embers, but quickly drew it out with a cry of pain. How strange, I thought that the same cause should produce such opposite effects.
But her's was the misery of innocence, which, like a cloud that passes over the fair moon, for a while hides, but cannot tarnish its brightness.
