“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“A human being in perfection ought always to preserve a calm and peaceful mind and never to allow passion or a transitory desire to disturb his tranquility.”
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein“There is something at work in my soul, which I do not understand.”
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein“I need not describe the feelings of those whose dearest ties are rent by that most irreparable evil, the void that presents itself to the soul, and the despair that is exhibited on the countenance. It is so long before the mind can persuade itself that she whom we saw everyday and whose very existence appeared a part of our own can have departed forever - that the brightness of a beloved eye can have been extinguished and the sound of a voice so familiar and dear to the ear can be hushed, never more to be heard. (...) The time at length arrives when grief is rather an indulgence than a necessity; and the smile that plays upon the lips, although it may be deemed a sacrilege, is not banished.”
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein“I looked upon the sea, it was to be my grave”
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein“I do know that for the sympathy of one living being, I would make peace with all. I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine and rage the likes of which you would not believe. If I cannot satisfy the one, I will indulge the other.”
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein“The same energy of character which renders a man a daring villain would have rendered him useful in society, had that society been well organized.”
Mary Wollstonecraft“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“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“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“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