Mary Astell Quotes

• A woman indeed can’t properly be said to choose, all that is allowed her, is to refuse or accept what is offered.

  Mary Astell

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• But if marriage be such a blessed state, how comes it, may you say, that there are so few happy marriages? Now in answer to this, is it not to be wondered that so few succeed, we should rather be surprized to find so many do, considering how imprudently men engage, the motive they act by, and the very strange conduct they observe throughout.

  Mary Astell

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• If all men are born free, how is it that all women are born slaves? as they must be if the being subjected to the inconsistent, uncertain, unknown, arbitrary will of men, be the perfect condition of slavery? and if the essence of freedom consists, as our masters say it does, in having a standing rule to live by? And why is slavery so much condemned and strove against in one case, and so highly applauded, and held so necessary and so sacred in another ?

  Mary Astell

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• If absolute sovereignty be not necessary in a State, how comes it to be so in a family ?

  Mary Astell

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• Fetters of gold are still fetters, and the softest lining can never make them so easy as liberty.

  Mary Astell

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• Women are from their very Infancy debarred those advantages, with the want of which they are afterwards reproached, and nursed up in those vices which will hereafter be upbraided to them. So partial are men as to expect brick where they afford no straw.

  Mary Astell

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• Your glass will not do you half so much service as a serious reflection of your own minds.

  Mary Astell

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• Your glass will not do you half so much service as a serious reflection on your own minds.

  Mary Astell

• Women need not take up with mean things, since (if they are not wanting to themselves) they are capable of the best.

  Mary Astell

• Women are not so well united as to form an Insurrection. They are for the most part wise enough to love their Chains, and to discern how becomingly they fit.

  Mary Astell

• Women are from their very infancy debarred those Advantages with the want of which they are afterwards reproached.

  Mary Astell

• Why is Slavery so much condemn’d and strove against in one Case, and so highly applauded and held so necessary and so sacred in another?

  Mary Astell

• Whilst our Hearts are violently set upon any thing, there is no convincing us that we shall ever be of another Mind.

  Mary Astell

• We ought as much as we can to endeavour the Perfecting of our Beings, and that we be as happy as possibly we may.

  Mary Astell

• We must Think what we Say, and Mean what we Profess.

  Mary Astell

• We may not commit a lesser Sin under pretence to avoid a greater, but we may, nay we ought to endure the greatest Pain and Grief rather than commit the least Sin.

  Mary Astell

• We all agree that its fit to be as Happy as we can, and we need no Instructor to teach us this Knowledge, ’tis born with us, and is inseparable from our Being, but we very much need to be Inform’d what is the true Way to Happiness.

  Mary Astell

• Upon the principles of reason, the good of many is preferable to the good of a few or of one; a lasting good is to be preferred before a temporary, the public before the private.

  Mary Astell

• Unhappy is that Grandeur which makes us too great to be good; and that Wit which sets us at a distance from true Wisdom.

  Mary Astell

• Truth is strong, and sometime or other will prevail.

  Mary Astell

Mary Astell (54)

Birth:	12th November, 1666
Death:	11th May, 1731
Nationality:	British
Profession:	Writer

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