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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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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
Mind
Thus
Unfortunate
Locomotives
Property
Seldom
Exert
Birth
Faculty
Viewing
Happiness
Medium
Discern
True
Mediums
Hereditary
Body
Merit
Consist
Thing
False
Victims
Every
Victim
Unable
Locomotive

More quotes by Mary Wollstonecraft

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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.
Mary Wollstonecraft
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The mind will ever be unstable that has only prejudices to rest on.
Mary Wollstonecraft
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When we feel deeply, we reason profoundly.
Mary Wollstonecraft
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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.
Mary Wollstonecraft
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When a man seduces a woman, it should, I think, be termed a left-handed marriage.
Mary Wollstonecraft
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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.
Mary Wollstonecraft
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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.
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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I think I love most people best when they are in adversity for pity is one of my prevailing passions.
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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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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Situation seems to be the mould in which men's characters are formed.
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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It is time to effect a revolution in female manners - time to restore to them their lost dignity. It is time to separate unchangeable morals from local manners.
Mary Wollstonecraft
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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.
Mary Wollstonecraft
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We reason deeply, when we forcibly feel.
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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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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My husband - my king.
Mary Wollstonecraft
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People thinking for themselves have more energy in their voice, than any government, which it is possible for human wisdom to invent and every government not aware of this sacred truth will, at some period, be suddenly overturned.
Mary Wollstonecraft