Top 160 Mary Wollstonecraft Quotes (2024 Update)
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101. “The most holy band of society is friendship. It has been well said, by a shrewd satirist, “that rare as true love is, true friendship is still rarer.”

— Mary Wollstonecraft

102. “The two sexes mutually corrupt and improve each other.”

— Mary Wollstonecraft

103. “Asserting the rights which women in common with men ought to contend for, I have not attempted to extenuate their faults; but to prove them to be the natural consequence of their education and station in society. If so, it is reasonable to suppose, that they will change their character, and correct their vices and follies, when they are allowed to be free in a physical, moral, and civil sense.”

— Mary Wollstonecraft

104. “Nature has given woman a weaker frame than man; but, to ensure her husband’s affections, must a wife, who, by the exercise of her mind and body, whilst she was discharging the duties of a daughter, wife, and mother, has allowed her constitution to retain its natural strength, and her nerves a healthy tone, is she, I say, to condescend, to use art, and feign a sickly delicacy, in order to secure her husband’s affection?”

— Mary Wollstonecraft

105. “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

106. “Why must the female mind be tainted by coquetish arts to gratify the sensualist, and prevent love from subsiding into friendship or compassionate tenderness, when there are not qualities on which friendship can be built? Let the honest heart show itself, and REASON teach passion to submit to necessity; or, let the dignified pursuit of virtue and knowledge raise the mind above those emotions which rather imbitter than sweeten the cup of life, when they are not restrained within due bounds.”

— Mary Wollstonecraft

107. “It appears to me impossible that I should cease to exist, or that this active, restless spirit, equally alive to joy and sorrow, should only be organised dust – ready to fly abroad the moment the spring snaps, or the spark goes out, which kept it together. Surely something resides in this heart that is not perishable – and life is more than a dream.”

— Mary Wollstonecraft

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

— Mary Wollstonecraft

109. “Only by the jostlings of equality can we form a just opinion of ourselves.”

— Mary Wollstonecraft

110. “The endeavor to keep alive any hoary establishment beyond its natural date is often pernicious and always useless.”

— Mary Wollstonecraft

111. “I begin to love this creature, and to anticipate her birth as a fresh twist to a knot, which I do not wish to untie.”

— Mary Wollstonecraft

112. “Men with common minds seldom break through general rules. Prudence is ever the resort of weakness; and they rarely go as far as as they may in any undertaking, who are determined not to go beyond it on any account.”

— Mary Wollstonecraft

113. “Solitude and reflection are necessary to give to wishes the force of passions.”

— Mary Wollstonecraft

114. “Still the men stand up for the dignity of man, by oppressing the women.”

— Mary Wollstonecraft

115. “Independence I have long considered as the grand blessing of life, the basis of every virtue; and independence I will ever secure by contracting my wants, though I were to live on a barren heath.”

— Mary Wollstonecraft

116. “True happiness must arise from well-regulated affections, and an affection includes a duty.”

— Mary Wollstonecraft

117. “Friendship and domestic happiness are continually praised; yet how little is there of either in the world, because it requires more cultivation of mind to keep awake affection, even in our own hearts, than the common run of people suppose.”

— Mary Wollstonecraft

118. “Life cannot be seen by an unmoved spectator.”

— Mary Wollstonecraft

119. “If there is but one criterion of morals, but one archetype for man, women appear to be suspended by destiny, according to the vulgar tale of Mahomet’s coffin; they have neither the unerring instinct of brutes, nor are allowed to fix the eye of reason on a perfect model. They were made to be loved, and must not aim at respect, lest they should be hunted out of society as masculine.”

— Mary Wollstonecraft

120. “A little patience, and all will be over.”

— Mary Wollstonecraft

121. “Nay the honour of the woman is not made even to depend on her will.”

— Mary Wollstonecraft

122. “I have sighed when obliged to confess that either Nature has made a great difference between man and man, or that the civilization which has hitherto taken place in the world has been very partial.”

— Mary Wollstonecraft

123. “Women have seldom sufficient employment to silence their feelings; a round of little cares, or vain pursuits frittering away all strength of mind and organs, they become naturally only objects of sense.”

— Mary Wollstonecraft

124. “Considering the length of time that women have been dependent, is it surprising that some of them hug their chains, and fawn like the spaniel?”

— Mary Wollstonecraft

125. “It is the preservation of the species, not of individuals, which appears to be the design of Deity throughout the whole of nature.”

— Mary Wollstonecraft

126. “To carry the remark still further, if fear in girls, instead of being cherished, perhaps, created, were treated in the same manner as cowardice in boys, we should quickly see women with more dignified aspects. It is true, they could not then with equal propriety be termed the sweet flowers that smile in the walk of man; but they would be more respectable members of society, and discharge the important duties of life by the light of their own reason.”

— Mary Wollstonecraft

127. “If they told us, that in a pre-existent state the soul was fond of dress, and brought this inclination with it into a new body, I should listen to them with a half smile, as I often do when I hear a rant about innate elegance. But if he only meant to say that the exercise of the faculties will produce this fondness, I deny it. It is not natural; but arises, like false ambition in men, from a love of power.”

— Mary Wollstonecraft

128. “Parental affection is, perhaps, the blindest modification of perverse self-love;.”

— Mary Wollstonecraft

129. “Why are girls to be told that they resemble angels; but to sink them below women? Or, that a gentle, innocent female is an object that comes nearer to the idea which we have formed of angels than any other. Yet they are told, at the same time, that they are only like angels when they are young and beautiful; consequently, it is their persons, not their virtues, that procure them this homage.”

— Mary Wollstonecraft

130. “Most prospects in life are marred by the shuffling worldly wisdom of men, who, forgetting that they cannot serve God and mammon, endeavour to blend contradictory things. If you wish to make your son rich, pursue one course – if you are only anxious to make him virtuous, you must take another; but do not imagine that you can bound from one road to the other without losing your way.”

— Mary Wollstonecraft

131. “True sensibility, the sensibility which is the auxiliary of virtue, and the soul of genius, is in society so occupied with the feelings of others, as scarcely to regard its own sensations.”

— Mary Wollstonecraft

132. “Women are told from their infancy, and taught by the example of their mothers, that a little knowlegde of human weakness, justly termed cunning, softness of temper; outward obedience, and a scrupulous attention to a puerile kind of proptiety, will obtain for them the protection of man; and should they be beautiful, every thing else is needless, for, at least, twenty years of their lives.”

— Mary Wollstonecraft

133. “The best method, I believe, that can be adopted to correct a fondness for novels is to ridicule them; not indiscriminately, for then it would have little effect; but, if a judicious person, with some turn for humour, would read several to a young girl, and point out, both by tones and apt comparisons with pathetic incidents and heroic characters in history, how foolishly and ridiculously they caricatured human nature, just opinions might be substituted instead of romantic sentiments.”

— Mary Wollstonecraft

134. “Besides, the woman who strengthens her body and exercises her mind will, by managing her family and practising various virtues, become the friend, and not the humble dependent of her husband; and if she deserves his regard by possessing such substantial qualities, she will not find it necessary to conceal her affection, nor to pretend to an unnatural coldness of constitution to excite her husband’s passions.”

— Mary Wollstonecraft

135. “It is easier to list modes of behaviour that are required or forbidden than to set reason to work; but once the mind has been stored with useful knowledge and strengthened by being used, the regulation of the behaviour may safely be left to its guidance without the aid of formal rules.”

— Mary Wollstonecraft

136. “Can they supinely dream life away in the lap of pleasure, or in the languor of weariness, rather than assert their claim to pursue reasonable pleasures, and render themselves conspicuous, by practising the virtues which dignify mankind?”

— Mary Wollstonecraft

137. “Let us eat, drink, and love for tomorrow we die, would be in fact the language of reason, the morality of life; and who but a fool would part with a reality for a fleeting shadow?”

— Mary Wollstonecraft

138. “Love, the common passion, in which chance and sensation take place of choice and reason, is in some degree, felt by the mass of mankind; for it is not necessary to speak, at present, of the emotions that rise above or sink below love.”

— Mary Wollstonecraft

139. “It appears necessary to go back to first principles in search of the most simple truths, and to dispute with some prevailing prejudice every inch of ground.”

— Mary Wollstonecraft

140. “I must be allowed to add some explanatory remarks to bring the subject home to reason-to that sluggish reason, which supinely takes opinions on trust, and obstinately supports them to spare itself the labour of thinking.”

— Mary Wollstonecraft

141. “The flexible muscles growing daily more rigid give character to the countenance ; that is, they trace the operations of the mind with the iron pen of fate, and tell us not only what powers are within, but how they have been employed.”

— Mary Wollstonecraft

142. “We cannot, without depraving our minds, endeavour to please a lover or husband, but in proportion as he pleases us.”

— Mary Wollstonecraft

143. “Thus do we wish as we float down the stream of life, whilst chance does m.”

— Mary Wollstonecraft

144. “She would stand and behold the waves rolling, and think of the voice that could still the tumultuous deep.”

— Mary Wollstonecraft

145. “He that hath wife and children,” says Lord Bacon, “hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief. Certainly the best works, and of greatest merit for the public, have proceeded from the unmarried or childless men.” I say the same of women.”

— Mary Wollstonecraft

146. “But the days of true heroism are over, when a citizen fought for his country like a Fabricius or a Washington, and then returned to his farm to let his virtuous fervour run in a more placid, but not less salutary, stream.”

— Mary Wollstonecraft

147. “Few, I believe, have had much affection for mankind, who did not first love their parents, their brothers, sisters, and even the domestic brutes, whom they first played with.”

— Mary Wollstonecraft

148. “Who can clip its wings?”

— Mary Wollstonecraft

149. “I gazed around with rapture, and felt more of that spontaneous pleasure which gives credibility to our expectation of happiness than I had for a long, long time before.”

— Mary Wollstonecraft

150. “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 sentiment, and refinement of taste, are almost synonymous with epithets of weakness, and that those beings are only the objects of pity, and that kind of love which has been termed its sister, will soon become objects of contempt.”

— Mary Wollstonecraft