Quotes from Mary Wollstonecraft

The graceful ivy, clasping the oak that supported it, would form a whole in which strength and beauty would be equally conspicuous.

... we never do any thing well, unless we love it for its own sake.

Life cannot be seen by an unmoved spectator.

I do earnestly wish to see the distinction of sex confounded in society, unless where love animates the behaviour.

The divine right of husbands, like the divine right of kings, may, it is hoped, in this enlightened age, be contested without danger.

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.

How can a rational being be ennobled by any thing that is not obtained by its own exertions?

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.

The beginning is always today.

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.

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 same energy of character which renders a man a daring villain would have rendered him useful in society, had that society been well organized.

Learn from me, if not by my precepts, then by my example, how dangerous is the pursuit of knowledge and how much happier is that man who believes his native town to be the world than he who aspires to be greater than his nature will allow.

Simplicity and sincerity generally go hand in hand, as both proceed from a love of truth.

But what a weak barrier is truth when it stands in the way of an hypothesis!

I think I love most people best when they are in adversity; for pity is one of my prevailing passions.

Love, from its very nature, must be transitory.

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.

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.

No man chooses evil because it's evil. He only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks.

A modest man is steady, an humble man timid, and a vain one presumptuous.

Men, in general, seem to employ their reason to justify prejudices...rather than to root them out.

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.

I do not wish women to have power over men; but over themselves.