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The endeavor to keep alive any hoary establishment beyond its natural date is often pernicious and always useless.

Mary Wollstonecraft

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Mary Wollstonecraft
Age: 38 †
Born: 1759
Born: April 27
Died: 1797
Died: September 10
Businessperson
Essayist
Governess
Historian
Novelist
Philosopher
Translator
Travel Writer
Writer
Mary Godwin
Mr. Cresswick
Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin
Diversity
Beyond
Alive
Hoary
Justice
Pernicious
Natural
Date
Often
Endeavor
Keep
Establishment
Always
Useless

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My husband - my king.
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Surely something resides in this heart that is not perishable - and life is more than a dream.
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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.
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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.
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Slavery to monarchs and ministers, which the world will be long freeing itself from, and whose deadly grasp stops the progress of the human mind, is not yet abolished.
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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.
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Situation seems to be the mould in which men's characters are formed.
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To be a good mother, a woman must have sense, and that independence of mind which few women possess who are taught to depend entirely on their husbands. Meek wives are, in general, foolish mothers wanting their children to love them best, and take their part, in secret, against the father, who is held up as a scarecrow.
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The divine right of husbands, like the divine right of kings, may, it is hoped, in this enlightened age, be contested without danger.
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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.
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Till women are more rationally educated, the progress in human virtue and improvement in knowledge must receive continual checks.
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Men, in general, seem to employ their reason to justify prejudices...rather than to root them out.
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Every political good carried to the extreme must be productive of evil.
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Executions, far from being useful examples to the survivors, have, I am persuaded, a quite contrary effect, by hardening the heart they ought to terrify. Besides, the fear of an ignominious death, I believe, never deterred anyone from the commission of a crime, because in committing it the mind is roused to activity about present circumstances.
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The appetites will rule if the mind is vacant.
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I must be allowed to add some explanatory remarks to bring the subject home to reason-to that sluggish reason, which supinely takes opinions on trust, and obstinately supports them to spare itself the labour of thinking.
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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.
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Weakness may excite tenderness, and gratify the arrogant pride of man but the lordly caresses of a protector will not gratify a noble mind that pants for, and deserves to be respected. Fondness is a poor substitute for friendship.
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...men endeavor to sink us still lower, merely to render us alluring objects for a moment and women, intoxicated by the adoration which men, under the influence of their senses, pay them, do not seek to obtain a durable interest in their hearts, or to become the friends of the fellow creatures who find amusement in their society.
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Women ought to have representatives, instead of being arbitrarily governed without any direct share allowed them in the deliberations of government.
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