A Vindication Of The Rights Of Woman Quotes
"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."
"It is, then, an affection for the whole human race that makes my pen dart rapidly along to support what I believe to be the cause of virtue."
"My opinion, indeed, respecting the rights and duties of woman, seems to flow so naturally from these simple principles, that I think it scarcely possible, but that some of the enlarged minds who formed your admirable constitution, will coincide with me."
"Manners and morals are so nearly allied, that they have often been confounded; but, though the former should only be the natural reflection of the latter, yet, when various causes have produced factitious and corrupt manners, which are very early caught, morality becomes an empty name."
"Contending for the rights of women, my main argument is built on this simple principle, that if she be not prepared by education to become the companion of man, she will stop the progress of knowledge, for truth must be common to all, or it will be inefficacious with respect to its influence on general practice."
"I have repeatedly asserted, and produced what appeared to me irrefragable arguments drawn from matters of fact, to prove my assertion, that women cannot, by force, be confined to domestic concerns; for they will however ignorant, intermeddle with more weighty affairs, neglecting private duties only to disturb, by cunning tricks, the orderly plans of reason which rise above their comprehension."
"But as wars, agriculture, commerce, and literature, expand the mind, despots are compelled, to make covert corruption hold fast the power which was formerly snatched by open force."
"If then women are not a swarm of ephemeron triflers, why should they be kept in ignorance under the specious name of innocence?"
"It is a farce to call any being virtuous whose virtues do not result from the exercise of its own reason."
"Many are the causes that, in the present corrupt state of society, contribute to enslave women by cramping their understandings and sharpening their senses. One, perhaps, that silently does more mischief than all the rest, is their disregard of order."
"To do everything in an orderly manner is a most important precept, which women, who, generally speaking, receive only a disorderly kind of education, seldom attend to with that degree of exactness that men, who from their infancy are broken into method, observe."
"This contempt of the understanding in early life has more baneful consequences than is commonly supposed."
"In the present state of society, a little learning is required to support the character of a gentleman; and boys are obliged to submit to a few years of discipline."
"Strengthen the female mind by enlarging it, and there will be an end to blind obedience."
"The consequence is natural; satisfied with common nature, they become a prey to prejudices, and taking all their opinions on credit, they blindly submit to authority."
"Life yields not the felicity which can satisfy an immortal soul."
"It is the cultivation of the understanding that is always subordinate to the acquirement of some corporeal accomplishment."
"The great misfortune is this, that they both acquire manners before morals, and a knowledge of life before they have from reflection, any acquaintance with the grand ideal outline of human nature."
"The sensualist, indeed, has been the most dangerous of tyrants, and women have been duped by their lovers, as princes by their ministers, whilst dreaming that they reigned over them."
"May not the same remark be applied to women? Nay, the argument may be carried still further, for they are both thrown out of a useful station by the unnatural distinctions established in civilized life."
"Liberty is the mother of virtue, and if women are, by their very constitution, slaves, and not allowed to breathe the sharp invigorating air of freedom, they must ever languish like exotics, and be reckoned beautiful flaws in nature."
"Virtue, 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."
"Yet thus to give a sex to mind was not very consistent with the principles of a man who argued so warmly, and so well, for the immortality of the soul."
"But what a weak barrier is truth when it stands in the way of an hypothesis!"
"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."
"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."
"If men be demi-gods, why let us serve them! And if the dignity of the female soul be as disputable as that of animals, if their reason does not afford sufficient light to direct their conduct whilst unerring instinct is denied, they are surely of all creatures the most miserable."
"The only solid foundation for morality appears to be the character of the Supreme Being; the harmony of which arises from a balance of attributes."
"To become respectable, the exercise of their understanding is necessary, there is no other foundation for independence of character."
"The passions of men have thus placed women on thrones; and, till mankind become more reasonable, it is to be feared that women will avail themselves of the power which they attain with the least exertion."
"The power of generalizing ideas, of drawing comprehensive conclusions from individual observations, is the only acquirement for an immortal being, that really deserves the name of knowledge."
"Pleasure is the business of a woman’s life, according to the present modification of society, and while it continues to be so, little can be expected from such weak beings."
"To rise in the world, and have the liberty of running from pleasure to pleasure, they must marry advantageously, and to this object their time is sacrificed, and their persons often legally prostituted."
"Fatal passions, which have ever domineered over the whole race!"
"A man, when he undertakes a journey, has, in general, the end in view; a woman thinks more of the incidental occurrences."
"Can dignity of mind exist with such trivial cares?"
"Their senses are inflamed, and their understandings neglected; consequently they become the prey of their senses, delicately termed sensibility."
"Miserable, indeed, must be that being whose cultivation of mind has only tended to inflame its passions!"
"Novels, music, poetry, and gallantry, all tend to make women the creatures of sensation."
"Satiety has a very different effect, and I have often been forcibly struck by an emphatical description of damnation."
"To remain innocent; they mean in a state of childhood. We might as well never have been born."
"The evil is sometimes more serious, and domestics are deprived of innocent indulgences, and made to work beyond their strength."
"Educate women like men, says Rousseau, and the more they resemble our sex the less power will they have over us."
"What is sensibility? Quickness of sensation; quickness of perception; delicacy."
"If woman be allowed to have an immortal soul, she must have as the employment of life, an understanding to improve."
"Virtue, and pleasure are not, in fact, so nearly allied in this life as some eloquent writers have laboured to prove."
"To give an example of order, the soul of virtue, some austerity of behaviour must be adopted."
"Whoever rationally means to be useful, must have a plan of conduct."
"Love, such as the glowing pen of genius has traced, exists not on earth."
"The exercise of the understanding, as life advances, is the only method pointed out by nature to calm the passions."
"Pleasure's the portion of th' inferior kind; But glory, virtue, Heaven for man design'd."
"Flowers Sweet, and gay, and Delicate Like You; Emblems of innocence, and beauty too."
"The mass of mankind are rather the slaves of their appetites than of their passions."
"Supposing that women are voluntary slaves—slavery of any kind is unfavourable to human happiness and improvement."
"The strength of an affection is, generally, in the same proportion as the character of the species in the object beloved, is lost in that of the individual."
"I wish to see women neither heroines nor brutes; but reasonable creatures."
"Sensual pleasures are transient. The habitual state of the affections always loses by their gratification."
"Curst be the impious hand that would dare to violate the unblemished form of Chastity!"
"Beauty cannot be acquired by dress, and coquetry is an art not so early and speedily attained."
"Children often form a more agreeable and permanent connexion between married people than even love itself."
"Such paternal solicitude pervades Dr. Gregory’s Legacy to his daughters, that I enter on the task of criticism with affectionate respect."
"His easy familiar style is particularly suited to the tenor of his advice, and the melancholy tenderness which his respect for the memory of a beloved wife diffuses through the whole work, renders it very interesting."
"In the preface he tells them a mournful truth, 'that they will hear, at least once in their lives, the genuine sentiments of a man, who has no interest in deceiving them.'"
"Hapless woman! what can be expected from thee, when the beings on whom thou art said naturally to depend for reason and support, have all an interest in deceiving thee!"
"If love has made some women wretched—how many more has the cold unmeaning intercourse of gallantry rendered vain and useless!"
"A cultivated understanding, and an affectionate heart, will never want starched rules of decorum, something more substantial than seemliness will be the result."
"Make the heart clean, and give the head employment, and I will venture to predict that there will be nothing offensive in the behaviour."
"It is this system of dissimulation, throughout the volume, that I despise. Women are always to seem to be this and that—yet virtue might apostrophize them, in the words of Hamlet—Seems! I know not seems!—Have that within that passeth show!"
"Happy would it be for the world, and for individuals, of course, if all this unavailing solicitude to attain worldly happiness, on a confined plan, were turned into an anxious desire to improve the understanding."
"I do not mean to allude to all the writers who have written on the subject of female manners—it would in fact be only beating over the old ground, for they have, in general, written in the same strain."
"Whilst reason raises man above the brutal herd, and death is big with promises, they alone are subject to blind authority who have no reliance on their own strength."
"The being who can govern itself, has nothing to fear in life; but if anything is dearer than its own respect, the price must be paid to the last farthing."
"I find that all is but lip-wisdom which wants experience." - Sidney
"The great advantages which naturally result from storing the mind with knowledge, are obvious."
"Like the lightning’s flash are many recollections; one idea assimilating and explaining another, with astonishing rapidity."
"Education thus only supplies the man of genius with knowledge to give variety and contrast to his associations."
"The generality of people cannot see or feel poetically, they want fancy, and therefore fly from solitude in search of sensible objects."
"We never do any thing well, unless we love it for its own sake."
"Modesty! Sacred offspring of sensibility and reason! true delicacy of mind!"
"Purity of mind, or that genuine delicacy, which is the only virtuous support of chastity, is something nobler than innocence."
"True love, likewise, spreads this kind of mysterious sanctity round the beloved object."
"Men will probably still insist that woman ought to have more modesty than man; but it is not dispassionate reasoners who will most earnestly oppose my opinion."
"To render chastity the virtue from which unsophisticated modesty will naturally flow, the attention should be called away from employments, which only exercise the sensibility."
"Make the heart clean, let it expand and feel for all that is human, instead of being narrowed by selfish passions."
"Nothing can be more beautiful than the poetical fiction, which makes Diana with her silver crescent, the goddess of chastity."
"Modesty, being the child of reason, cannot long exist with the sensibility that is not tempered by reflection."
"Morality undermined by sexual notions of the importance of a good reputation."
"Weak minds are always fond of resting in the ceremonials of duty, but morality offers much simpler motives."
"Unless virtue, of any kind, is built on knowledge, it will only produce a kind of insipid decency."
"Respect for the opinion of the world has been termed the principal duty of woman in the most express words."
"Virtue that rests on opinion is merely worldly, and it is the virtue of a being to whom reason has been denied."
"Vain is the scrupulosity of ignorance, for neither religion nor virtue, when they reside in the heart, require such a puerile attention to mere ceremonies."
"The practice of truth, justice, and humanity, is a certain and almost infallible method of acquiring what those virtues chiefly aim at, the confidence and love of those we live with."
"Quietly does the clear light, shining day after day, refute the ignorant surmise, or malicious tale, which has thrown dirt on a pure character."
"Many people, undoubtedly in several respects, obtain a better reputation than, strictly speaking, they deserve."
"There are, it is true, trials when the good man must appeal to God from the injustice of man."
"Morality is very insidiously undermined in the female world by the attention being turned to the show instead of the substance."
"If we really deserve our own good opinion, we shall commonly be respected in the world."
"Humanity rises naturally out of humility, and twists the cords of love that in various convolutions entangle the heart."
"Parental affection, in many minds, is but a pretext to tyrannize where it can be done with impunity."