Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Quotes

• Nothing contributes so much to tranquilizing the mind as a steady purpose – a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye.

  Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin

  Topics in Soul

• Virtue can only flourish among equals.

  Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin

  Topics in Uncategorized

• How can a rational being be ennobled by any thing that is not obtained by its own exertions?

  Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin

  Topics in Uncategorized

• 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.

  Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin

  Topics in Knowledge, Nature

• Why is our fancy to be appalled by terrific perspectives of a hell beyond the grave?

  Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin

  Topics in Uncategorized

• 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.

  Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin

  Topics in Beauty

• 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.

  Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Women

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

  Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Women, Government

• 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.

  Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Women

• I do not wish them to have power over men, but over themselves.

  Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Women

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

  Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Manners, Opinion

• 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?

  Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin

  Topics in Power

  Tags in Women

• 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.

  Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Opinion, Character

• Every political good carried to the extreme must be productive of evil.

  Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin

  Topics in Politics

  Tags in Good, Evil

• 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.

  Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Friends

• 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 Godwin

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Reason

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

  Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin

  Topics in Children

  Tags in Weakness

• 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 Godwin

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Reason

• The beginning is always today.

  Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Now, Beginning

• 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.

  Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Freedom

Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (62)

Birth:	27th April, 1759
Death:	10th September, 1797
Nationality:	British
Profession:	Writer, Philosopher

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