Mary Wollstonecraft

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

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.

Taught from 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.

If women be educated for dependence; that is, to act according to the will of another fallible being, and submit, right or wrong, to power, where are we to stop?

Children, I grant, should be innocent; but when the epithet is applied to men, or women, it is but a civil term for weakness.

If the abstract rights of man will bear discussion and explanation, those of women, by a parity of reasoning, will not shrink from the same test.

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.

Women are degraded by the propensity to enjoy the present moment, and, at last, despise the freedom which they have not sufficient virtue to struggle to attain.

Women ought to have representatives, instead of being arbitrarily governed without any direct share allowed them in the deliberations of government.

Men and women must be educated, in a great degree, by the opinions and manners of the society they live in.

Make women rational creatures, and free citizens, and they will quickly become good wives; - that is, if men do not neglect the duties of husbands and fathers.

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.

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

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.

Virtue can only flourish among equals.

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.

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.

Friendship is a serious affection the most sublime of all affections because it is founded on principle and cemented by time. The very reverse may be said of love. In a great degree love and friendship cannot subsist in the same bosom even when inspired by different objects they weaken or destroy each other and for the same object can only be felt in succession. The vain fears and fond jealousies the winds which fan the flame of love when judiciously or artfully tempered are both incompatible with the tender confidence and sincere respect of friendship.