Quotes from Mary Astell

If a Woman can neither Love nor Honour, she does ill in promising to Obey.

Truth is strong, and sometime or other will prevail.

For certainly there cannot be a higher pleasure than to think that we love and are beloved by the most amiable and best Being.

We may not commit a lesser Sin under pretence to avoid a greater, but we may, nay we ought to endure the greatest Pain and Grief rather than commit the least Sin.

How can you be content to be in the world like tulips in a garden, to make a fine show, and be good for nothing.

The Relation we bear to the Wisdom of the Father, the Son of His Love, gives us indeed a dignity which otherwise we have no pretence to. It makes us something, something considerable even in God's Eyes.

Unhappy is that Grandeur which makes us too great to be good; and that Wit which sets us at a distance from true Wisdom.

Women are from their very infancy debarred those Advantages with the want of which they are afterwards reproached.

If all men are born free, why is it that all women are born slaves?

That Man indeed can never be good at heart, who is full of himself and his own Endowments.

None of us whether Men or Women but have so good an Opinion of our own Conduct as to believe we are fit, if not to direct others, at least to govern our selves.

Women are not so well united as to form an Insurrection. They are for the most part wise enough to love their Chains, and to discern how becomingly they fit.

Women need not take up with mean things, since (if they are not wanting to themselves) they are capable of the best.

The Steps to Folly as well as Sin are gradual, and almost imperceptible, and when we are once on the Decline, we go down without taking notice on't.

Nor can the Apostle mean that Eve only sinned; or that she only was Deceived, for if Adam sinned willfully and knowingly, he became the greater Transgressor.

Hitherto I have courted Truth with a kind of Romantick Passion, in spite of all Difficulties and Discouragements: for knowledge is thought so unnecessary an Accomplishment for a Woman, that few will give themselves the Trouble to assist us in the Attainment of it.

Every Body has so good an Opinion of their own Understanding as to think their own way the best.

The design of Rhetoric is to remove those Prejudices that lie in the way of Truth, to Reduce the Passions to the Government of Reasons; to place our Subject in a Right Light, and excite our Hearers to a due consideration of it.

Ignorance and a narrow education lay the foundation of vice, and imitation and custom rear it up.

To all the rest of his Absurdities, (for vice is always unreasonable,) he adds one more, who expects that Vertue from another which he won't practise himself.

But, alas! what poor Woman is ever taught that she should have a higher Design than to get her a Husband?

If absolute sovereignty be not necessary in a State, how comes it to be so in a family?

friendship is a virtue which comprehends all the rest; none being fit for this, who is not adorned with every other virtue.

If all men are born free, how is it that all women are born slaves?