Wollstonecraft Quotes

At first I started back, unable to believe that it was indeed I who was reflected in the mirror; and when I became fully convinced that I was in reality the monster that I am, I was filled with the bitterest sensations of despondence and mortification. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

From my infancy I was imbued with high hopes and a lofty ambition. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Solitude becomes a sort of tangible enemy, the more dangerous, because it dwells within the citadel itself. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

To be a great and virtuous man appeared the highest honour that can befall a sensitive being; to be base and vicious, as many on record have been, appeared the lowest degradation, a condition more abject than that of the blind mole or harmless worm. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

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

I will be cool, persevering, and prudent. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

You have not studied the histories of ancient times, and perhaps know not the life that breathes in them; a soul of beauty and wisdom which had penetrated my heart of hearts. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Happiness is in its highest degree the sister of goodness. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

All the sacred rights of humanity are violated by insisting on blind obedience. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft

A virtuous man may have a choleric or a sanguine constitution, be gay or grave, unreproved, be firm till he is almost over-bearing, or weakly subsmissive, have no will or opinion of his own; but all women are to be levelled, by meekness and docility, into one character of yielding softness and gentle compliance ~ Mary Wollstonecraft

Let me reason with the supporters of this opinion, who have any knowledge of human nature, do they imagine that marriage can eradicate the habitude of life? The woman who has only been taught to please, will soon find that her charms are oblique sun-beams, and that they cannot have much effect on her husband's heart when they are seen every day, when the summer is past and gone. Will she then have sufficient native energy to look into herself for comfort, and cultivate her dormant faculties? or, is it not more rational to expect, that she will try to please other men; and, in the emotions raised by the expectation of new conquests, endeavour to forget the mortification her love or pride has received? When the husband ceases to be a lover - and the time will inevitably come, her desire of pleasing will then grow languid, or become a spring of bitterness; and love, perhaps, the most evanescent of all passions, gives place to jealousy or vanity. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft

You hate me; but your abhorrence cannot equal that with which I regard myself. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

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

Trifling employments have rendered woman a trifler. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft

Nay the honour of the woman is not made even to depend on her will. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft

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

Who can clip its wings? ~ Mary Wollstonecraft

I carried the books to my room and read through the night. I loved the fiery pages of Mary Wollstonecraft, but there was a single line written by John Stuart Mill that, when I read it, moved the world: "It is a subject on which nothing final can be known." The subject Mill had in mind was the nature of women. Mill claimed that women have been coaxed, cajoled, shoved and squashed into a series of feminine contortions for so many centuries, that it is now quite impossible to define their natural abilities or aspirations.

Blood rushed to my brain; I felt an animating surge of adrenaline, of possibility, of a frontier being pushed outward. Of the nature of women, nothing final can be known. Never had I found such comfort in a void, in the black absence of knowledge. It seemed to say: whatever you are, you are woman. ~ Tara Westover

Man preys on man; and you mourn for the idle tapestry that decorated a gothic pillar, and the dronish bell that summoned the fat priest to prayer. You mourn for the empty pageant of a name, when slavery flaps her wing, ... Why is our fancy to be appalled by terrific perspectives of a hell beyond the grave? - Hell stalks abroad; - the lash resounds on the slave's naked sides; and the sick wretch, who can no longer earn the sour bread of unremitting labour, steals to a ditch to bid the world a long good night. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft

The careful rearer of the ductile human plant can instil his own religion, and surround the soul by such a moral atmosphere, as shall become to its latest day the air it breathes. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

The passions also, the winds of life, would be useless, if not injurious, did the substance which composes our thinking being, after we have thought in vain, only become the support of vegetable life, and invigorate a cabbage, or blush in a rose. The appetites would answer every earthly purpose, and produce more moderate and permanent happiness. But the powers of the soul that are of little use here, and, probably, disturb our animal enjoyments, even while conscious dignity makes us glory in possessing them, prove that life is merely an education, a state of infancy, of which the only hopes worth cherishing should not be sacrificed. I mean, therefore to infer, that we ought to have a precise idea of what we wish to attain by education, for the immortality of the soul is contradicted by the actions of many people, who firmly profess the belief. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft

But women are very differently situated with respect to eachother - for they are all rivals ( ... ) Is it then surprising that when the sole ambition of woman centres in beauty, and interest gives vanity additional force, perpetual rivalships should ensue? They are all running the same race, and would rise above the virtue of morals, if they did not view each other with a suspicious and even envious eye. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft

Would ye, O my sisters, really possess modesty, ye must remember that the possession of virtue, of any denomination, is incompatible with ignorance and vanity! ye must acquire that soberness of mind, which the exercise of duties, and the pursuit of knowledge, alone inspire, or ye will still remain in a doubtful dependent situation, and only be loved whilst ye are fair! ~ Mary Wollstonecraft

Friendship is a serious affection; the most sublime of all affections, because it is founded on principle, and cemented by time. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft

Alas! Victor, when falsehood can look so like the truth, who can assure themselves of certain happiness? I feel as if I were walking on the edge of a precipice, towards which thousands are crowding, and endeavouring to plunge me into the abyss. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

As I sat, a train of reflection occurred to me, which led me to consider the effects of what I was now doing. Three years before I was engaged in the same manner, and had created a fiend whose unparalleled barbarity had desolated my hear, and filled it for ever with the bitterest remorse. I was now about to form another being, of whose disposition I was alike ignorant; she might become ten thousand times more malignant than her mate, and delight, for its own sake, in murder and wretchedness. He had sworn to quit the neighborhood of man, and hide himself in deserts; but she had not; and she, who in all probability was to become a thinking and reasoning animal, night refuse to comply with a compact made before her creation. They might even hate each other; the creature who already lived loathed his own deformity, and might he not convince a greater abhorrence for it when it came before his eyes in the female form? She also might turn with disgust from him to the superior beauty of man; she might quit him, and he would be again along, exasperated by the fresh provocation of being deserted by one of his own species. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

About half an hour afterwards he attempted again to speak, but was unable; he pressed my hand feebly, and his eyes closed for ever, while the irradiation of a gentle smile passed away from his lips. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

I was like the Arabian who had been buried with the dead, and found a passage to life aided only by one glimmering, and seemingly ineffectual, light. I ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

I am malicious because I am miserable ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

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

Like Wollstonecraft, Austen rejects the notion that 'man was made to reason, woman to feel.' Perhaps Austen was tired of reading passages in conduct books suggesting that young women were innately sensitive, quivering, emotional messes. ~ Emily Auerbach

I do not know,' said the man, 'what the custom of the English may be; but it is the custom of the Irish to hate villains. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

But let me now stop; I may be a little partial, and view every thing with the jaundiced eye of melancholy - for I am sad - and have cause. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft

The highest branch of solitary amusement is reading; but even in the choice of books the fancy is first employed; for in reading, the heart is touched, till its feelings are examined by the understanding, and the ripening of reason regulate the imagination. This is the work of years, and the most important of all employments. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft

Who made man the exclusive judge, if woman partake with him the gift of reason?
In this style, argue tyrants of every denomination, from the weak king to the weak father of a family; they are all eager to crush reason; yet always assert that they usurp its throne only to be useful. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft

How frequently has melancholy and even misanthropy taken possession of me, when the world has disgusted me, and friends have proven unkind. I have then considered myself as a particle broken off from the grand mass of mankind. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft

I generally rested during the day and travelled only when I was secured by night from the view of man. One morning, however, finding that my path lay through a deep wood, I ventured to continue my journey after the sun had risen; the day, which was one of the first of spring, cheered even me by the loveliness of its sunshine and the balminess of the air. I felt emotions of gentleness and pleasure, that had long appeared dead, revive within me. Half surprised by the novelty of these sensations, I allowed myself to be borne away by them, and forgetting my solitude and deformity, dared to be happy. Soft tears again bedewed my cheeks, and I even raised my humid eyes with thankfulness towards the blessed sun, which bestowed such joy upon me. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Let their faculties have room to unfold, and their virtues to gain strength, and then determine where the whole sex must stand in the intellectual scale. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft

I think schools, as they are now regulated, the hot-beds of vice and folly, and the knowledge of human nature supposedly attained there, merely cunning selfishness. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft

His wild and enthusiastic imagination was chastened by the sensibility of his heart. His soul overflowed with ardent affections, and his friendship was of that devoted and wondrous nature that the worldly-minded teach us to look for only in the imagination. But even human sympathies were not sufficient to satisfy his eager mind. The scenery of external nature, which others regard only with admiration, he loved with ardour[...] ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Before you sign my death-warrant, be sure that you are yourself safe. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

My father was not scientific, and I was left to struggle with a child's blindness, added to a student's thirst for knowledge. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

To examine the causes of life, we must first have recourse to death. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Even where the affections are not strongly moved by any superior excellence, the companions of our childhood always possess a certain power over our minds which hardly any later friend can obtain. They know our infantine dispositions, ...; and they can judge of our actions with more certain conclusions as to the integrity of our motives. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

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

The greater number of people take their opinions on trust, to avoid the trouble of exercising their own minds, and these indolent beings naturally adhere to the letter, rather than the spirit of a law, divine or human. ~ 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

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. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

She was the sort of person whose mood preceded her into the room whenever she arrived, an extra presence that could not be ignored. ~ Claire Tomalin

My candle was nearly burnt out, when, by the glimmer of the half-extinguished light, I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

When I wrote about Mary Wollstonecraft, I found that here she was, in the late 18th century, going to work for the 'Analytical Review.' What was the 'Analytical Review?' It was a magazine that dealt with politics and literature. ~ Claire Tomalin

They are the men of fancy, the favourites of the sex, who outwardly respect, and inwardly despise the weak creatures whom they thus sport with. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft

Richard, marked for misery and defeat, acknowledged that power which sentiment possesses to exalt us - to convince us that our minds, endowed with a soaring, restless aspiration, can find no repose on earth except in love. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Here then I retreated, and lay down, happy to have found a shelter, however miserable, from the inclemency of the season, and still more from the barbarity of man. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

I wish to soothe him; yet can I counsel one so infinitely miserable, so destitute of every hope of consolation, to live? ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

The more equality there is established among men, the more virtue and happiness will reign in society. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft

I must love and be loved. I must feel that my dear and chosen friends are happier through me. When I have wandered out of myself in my endeavour to shed pleasure around, I must again return laden with the gathered sweets on which I feed and live. Permit this to be, unblamed - permit a heart whose sufferings have been, and are, so many and so bitter, to reap what joy it can from the necessity it feels to be sympathized with - to love. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

At school boys become gluttons and slovens, and, instead of cultivating domestic affections, very early rush into the libertinism which destroys the constitution before it is formed; hardening the heart as it weakens the understanding. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft

the master of this person of an excellent disposition. And is remarkable in the ship for his gentleness,and the mildness of his disipline... added to his well known integrity and dauntless courage, made me desirious to engage him. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

If I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear! ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

The two sexes mutually corrupt and improve each other. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft

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

It is a strange feeling for a girl when first she finds the power put into her hand of influencing the destiny of another to happiness or misery. She is like a magician holding for the first time a fairy wand, not having yet had experience of its potency. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

What is wrong with being too much? With being too big? With being openly sexual, openly emotional -- with having "no calmness or content except when the needs of [your] individual nature were satisfied," as Martineau wrote of Wollstonecraft -- or even with being openly unhappy?

Only this: Insisting on the needs of your individual nature, being unquiet and unhappy when those needs are not satisfied, requires that you have an individual nature to begin with. And it requires that you not be ashamed of it. ~ Sady Doyle

True happiness must arise from well-regulated affections, and an affection includes a duty. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft

Surely there can be but one rule of right, if morality has an eternal foundation, and whoever sacrifices virtue, strictly so called, to present convenience, or whose DUTY it is to act in such a manner, lives only for the passing day, and cannot be an accountable creature. The poet then should have dropped his sneer when he says, "If weak women go astray, The stars are more in fault than they." For that they are bound by the adamantine chain of destiny is most certain, if it be proved that they are never to exercise their own reason, never to be independent, never to rise above opinion, or to feel the dignity of a rational will that only bows to God, and often forgets that the universe contains any being but itself, and the model of perfection to which its ardent gaze is turned, to adore attributes that, softened into virtues, may be imitated in kind, though the degree overwhelms the enraptured mind. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft

I aim at being useful, and sincerity will render me unaffected; for, wishing rather to persuade by the force of my arguments, than dazzle by the elegance of my language, I shall not waste my time in rounding periods, nor in fabricating the turgid bombast of artificial feelings, which, coming from the head, never reach the heart. - I shall be employed about things, not words! ~ Mary Wollstonecraft

I feel more than a mother's fondness and anxiety, when I reflect on the dependent and oppressed state of [my daughter's] sex. I dread lest she should be forced to sacrifice her heart to her principles, or principles to her heart. With trembling hand I shall cultivate sensibility, and cherish delicacy of sentiment, lest, whilst I lend fresh blushes to the rose, I sharpen the thorns that will wound the breast I would fain guard - I dread to unfold her mind, lest it should render her unfit for the worlds she is to inhabit - Hapless woman! What a fate is thine! ~ Mary Wollstonecraft

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

Make them free, and they will quickly become wise and virtous, as men become more so; for the improvement must be mutual, or the injustice which one half of the human race are obliged to submit to, retorting on their oppressors, the virtue of men will be worm-eaten by the insect whom he keeps under his feet ~ Mary Wollstonecraft

If then women are not a swarm of ephemeron triflers, why should they be kept in ignorance under the specious name of innocence? ~ Mary Wollstonecraft

My dreams were all my own; I accounted for them to nobody; they were my refuge when annoyed - my dearest pleasure when free. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft

The most perfect education ... is such an exercise of the understanding as is best calculated to strengthen the body and form the heart. Or, in other words, to enable the individual to attain such habits of virtue as will render it independent. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft

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

The endeavor to keep alive any hoary establishment beyond its natural date is often pernicious and always useless. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft

Once a king ... it was impossible, without risk of life, to sink to a private station. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

His conversation was full of imagination, and very often in limitation of ther Persian, and Arabic writers, he invented tales of wonderful fancy and passion. At other times he repeated my fsvorite poems or drew me out into arguments, wich he suported with great ingenuity. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

[M]en of genius and talents have started out of a class, in which women have never yet been placed. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft

In the education of women, the cultivation of the understanding is always subordinate to the acquirement of some corporeal accomplishment ... ~ 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

Solitude and reflection are necessary to give to wishes the force of passions. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft

But, if strength of body be, with some show of reason, the boast of men, why are women so infatuated as to be proud of a defect? Rousseau has furnished them with a plausible excuse, which could only have occurred to a man, whose imagination had been allowed to run wild, and refine on the impressions made by exquisite senses, that they might, forsooth have a pretext for yielding to a natural appetite without violating a romantic species of modesty, which gratifies the pride and libertinism of man. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft

And I call on you, spirits of the dead, and on you, wandering ministers of vengeance, to aid and conduct me in my work. Let ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Men, indeed, appear to me to act in a very unphilosophical manner when they try to secure the good conduct of women by attempting to keep them always in a state of childhood. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft

Wealth and female softness equally tend to debase mankind! ~ Mary Wollstonecraft

What, but the rapacity of the only men who exercised their reason, the priests, secured such vast property to the church, when a man gave his perishable substance to save himself from the dark torments of purgatory. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft

All men hate the wretched. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (whose mother died ten days after she was born) wrote a novel that anticipates Semmelweis's discovery and serves as a parable for the destructive power of decaying matter. ~ Laura Mullen

If your wish is to become really a man of science and not merely a petty experimentalist, I should advise you to apply to every branch of natural philosophy, including mathematics. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Persecuted and tortured as I am and have been, can death be any evil to me? ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

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

Happy would it be for women, if they were only flattered by the men who loved them; I mean, who love the individual, not the sex. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft

...Puritanism has made life itself impossible. More than art, more than estheticism, life represents beauty in a thousand variations; it is indeed, a gigantic panorama of eternal change. Puritanism, on the other hand, rests on a fixed and immovable conception of life; it is based on the Calvinistic idea that life is a curse, imposed upon man by the wrath of God. In order to redeem himself man must do constant penance, must repudiate every natural and healthy impulse, and turn his back on joy and beauty.

Puritanism celebrated its reign of terror in England during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, destroying and crushing every manifestation of art and culture. It was the spirit of Puritanism which robbed Shelley of his children, because he would not bow to the dicta of religion. It was the same narrow spirit which alienated Byron from his native land, because that great genius rebelled against the monotony, dullness, and pettiness of his country. It was Puritanism, too, that forced some of England's freest women into the conventional lie of marriage: Mary Wollstonecraft and, later, George Eliot. And recently Puritanism has demanded another toll--the life of Oscar Wilde. In fact, Puritanism has never ceased to be the most pernicious factor in the domain of John Bull, acting as censor of the artistic expression of his people, and stamping its approval only on the dullness of middle-class respectability. ~ Emma Goldman

Ennui, the demon, waited at the threshold of his noiseless refuge, and drove away the stirring hopes and enlivening expectations, which form the better part of life. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

The baneful consequences which flow from inattention to health during infancy, and youth, extend further than is supposed, dependence of body naturally produces dependence of mind; and how can she be a good wife or mother, the greater part of whose time is employed to guard against or endure sickness; nor can it be expected, that a woman will resolutely endeavour to strengthen her constitution and abstain from enervating indulgences, if artificial notions of beauty, and false descriptions of sensibility, have been early entangled with her motives of action. Most men are sometimes obliged to bear with bodily inconveniences, and to endure, occasionally, the inclemency of the elements; but genteel women are, literally speaking, slaves to their bodies, and glory in their subjection. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft

Yet women, whose minds are not enlarged by cultivation, or in whom the natural selfishness of sensibility hasn't been expanded by reflection, are very unfit to manage a family, because they always stretch their power and use tyranny to maintain a superiority that rests on nothing but the arbitrary distinction of fortune. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft

After attacking the sacred majesty of Kings, I shall scarcely excite surprise by adding my firm persuasion that every profession, in which great subordination of rank constitutes its power, is highly injurious to morality. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft

I need not describe the feelings of those whose dearest ties are rent by that most irreparable evil, the void that presents itself to the soul, and the despair that is exhibited on the countenance. It is so long before the mind can persuade itself that she whom we saw every day and whose very existence appeared a part of our own can have departed forever - that the brightness of a beloved eye can have been extinguished and the sound of a voice so familiar and dear to the ear can be hushed, never more to be heard. These are the reflections of the first days; but when the lapse of time proves the reality of the evil, then the actual bitterness of grief commences. Yet from whom has not that rude hand rent away some dear connection? And why should I describe a sorrow which all have felt, and must feel? 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. My mother was dead, but we had still duties which we ought to perform; we must continue our course with the rest and learn to think ourselves fortunate whilst one remains whom the spoiler has not seized. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Truly disappointment is the guardian deity of human life; she sits at the threshold of unborn time, and marshals the events as they come forth. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

We are fashioned creatures, but half made up. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley