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Men with common minds seldom break through general rules. Prudence is ever the resort of weakness and they rarely go as far as as they may in any undertaking, who are determined not to go beyond it on any account.

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
Beyond
Account
Break
Rarely
Common
Accounts
Undertaking
May
Determined
Undertakings
Ever
Weakness
Resort
Mind
Rules
Resorts
Men
Minds
Prudence
General
Seldom

More quotes by Mary Wollstonecraft

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Perhaps the seeds of false-refinement, immorality, and vanity, have ever been shed by the great. Weak, artificial beings, raised above the common wants and defections of their race, in a premature and unnatural manner, undermine the very foundation of virtue, and spread corruption through the whole mass of society!
Mary Wollstonecraft
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... we never do any thing well, unless we love it for its own sake.
Mary Wollstonecraft
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I do not wish women to have power over men but over themselves.
Mary Wollstonecraft
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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.
Mary Wollstonecraft
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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
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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.
Mary Wollstonecraft
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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.
Mary Wollstonecraft
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Women all want to be ladies, which is simply to have nothing to do, but listlessly to go they scarcely care where, for they cannot tell what.
Mary Wollstonecraft
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Surely something resides in this heart that is not perishable - and life is more than a dream.
Mary Wollstonecraft
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I think schools, as they are now regulated, the hot-beds of vice and folly, and the knowledge of human nature supposedly attained there, merely cunning selfishness.
Mary Wollstonecraft
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Men, in general, seem to employ their reason to justify prejudices...rather than to root them out.
Mary Wollstonecraft
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A war, or any wild-goose chase, is, as the vulgar use the phrase, a lucky turn-up of patronage for the minister, whose chief merit is the art of keeping himself in place.
Mary Wollstonecraft
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Only that education deserves emphatically to be termed cultivation of the mind which teaches young people how to begin to think.
Mary Wollstonecraft
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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.
Mary Wollstonecraft
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Hereditary property sophisticates the mind, and the unfortunate victims to it ... swathed from their birth, seldom exert the locomotive faculty of body or mind and, thus viewing every thing through one medium, and that a false one, they are unable to discern in what true merit and happiness consist.
Mary Wollstonecraft
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Situation seems to be the mould in which men's characters are formed.
Mary Wollstonecraft
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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
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I do earnestly wish to see the distinction of sex confounded in society, unless where love animates the behaviour.
Mary Wollstonecraft
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When any prevailing prejudice is attacked, the wise will consider, and leave the narrow-minded to rail with thoughtless vehemence at innovation.
Mary Wollstonecraft
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The graceful ivy, clasping the oak that supported it, would form a whole in which strength and beauty would be equally conspicuous.
Mary Wollstonecraft