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 Shelley
The beginning is always today.
– Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
Women ought to have representatives, instead of being arbitrarily governed without any direct share allowed them in the deliberations of government.
– Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
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 Shelley
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.
– Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
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 Shelley
Virtue can only flourish among equals.
– Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
The very winds whispered in soothing accents, and maternal Nature bade me weep no more.
– Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
The divine right of husbands, like the divine right of kings, may, it is hoped, in this enlightened age, be contested without danger.
– Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
The agony of my feelings allowed me no respite no incident occurred from which my rage and misery could not extract its food.
– Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
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 Shelley
No man chooses evil because it is evil he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks.
– Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
My dreams were at once more fantastic and agreeable than my writings.
– Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
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 Shelley
Men and women must be educated, in a great degree, by the opinions and manners of the society they live in.
– Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
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 Shelley
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 Shelley
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 Shelley
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 Shelley
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 Shelley
I do earnestly wish to see the distinction of sex confounded in society, unless where love animates the behaviour.
– Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
I am very averse to bringing myself forward in print, but as my account will only appear as an appendage to a former production, and as it will be confined to such topics as have connection with my authorship alone, I can hardly accuse myself of a personal intrusion.
– Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
Children, I grant, should be innocent but when the epithet is applied to men, or women, it is but a civil term for weakness.