Quotes by Mary Wollstonecraft

About Mary Wollstonecraft:

Mary Wollstonecraft is best known for A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), in which she argues that women are not naturally inferior to men, but appear to be only because they lack education. She suggests that both men and women should be treated as rational beings and imagines a social order founded on reason.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

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

Mary Wollstonecraft

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.

Mary Wollstonecraft

England and America owe their liberty to commerce, which created a new species of power to undermine the feudal system. But let them beware of the consequences: the tyranny of wealth is still more galling and debasing than that of rank.

Mary Wollstonecraft

I then supped with my companions, with whom I was soon after to part for ever - always a most melancholly, death-like idea - a sort of separation of soul; for all the regret which follows those from whom fate separates us, seems to be something torn ...

Mary Wollstonecraft

[I]f we revert to history, we shall find that the women who have distinguished themselves have neither been the most beautiful nor the most gentle of their sex.

Mary Wollstonecraft

Taught from their infancy that beauty is woman's sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison.

Mary Wollstonecraft

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

Mary Wollstonecraft

It is time to effect a revolution in female manners - time to restore to them their lost dignity - and make them, as a part of the human species, labour by reforming themselves to reform the world. It is time to separate unchangeable morals from loca...

Mary Wollstonecraft

I earnestly wish to point out in what true dignity and human happiness consists. I wish to persuade women to endeavor to acquire strength, both of mind and body, and to convince them that the soft phrases, susceptibility of heart, delicacy of sentime...

Mary Wollstonecraft

Only that education deserves emphatically to be termed cultivation of the mind which teaches young people how to begin to think.

Mary Wollstonecraft

My own sex, I hope, will excuse me, if I treat them like rational creatures, instead of flattering their graces, and viewing them as if they were in a state of perpetual childhood, unable to stand alone.

Mary Wollstonecraft

It is vain to expect virtue from women till they are in some degree independent of men.

Mary Wollstonecraft

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.

Mary Wollstonecraft

Love from its very nature must be transitory. To seek for a secret that would render it constant would be as wild a search as for the philosopher’s stone or the grand panacea: and the discovery would be equally useless, or rather pernicious to mank...

Mary Wollstonecraft

What but a pestilential vapour can hover over society when its chief director is only instructed in the invention of crimes, or the stupid routine of childish ceremonies?

Mary Wollstonecraft

The beginning is always today.

Mary Wollstonecraft

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.

Mary Wollstonecraft

The being cannot be termed rational or virtuous, who obeys any authority, but that of reason.

Mary Wollstonecraft

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

Mary Wollstonecraft

In fact, it is a farce to call any being virtuous whose virtues do not result from the exercise of its own reason.

Mary Wollstonecraft

Author Bio

  • NameMary Wollstonecraft
  • DescriptionBritish writer and philosopher
  • BornApril 27, 1759
  • DiedSeptember 10, 1797
  • CountryUnited Kingdom
  • ProfessionWriter; Translator; Philosopher; Historian; Novelist; Essayist