Taught from infancy that beauty is woman's scepter, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison.

— Mary Wollstonecraft

Taught from their infancy that beauty is woman's scepter, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison.

— Mary Wollstonecraft

The being who patiently endures injustice, and silently bears insults, will soon become unjust, or unable to discern right from wrong.

— Mary Wollstonecraft

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

The little respect paid to chastity in the male world is, I am persuaded, the grand source of many of the physical and moral evils that torment mankind, as well as of the vices and follies that degrade and destroy women; yet, at school, boys infallibly lose that decent bashfulness, which might have ripened into modesty at home.

— Mary Wollstonecraft

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

Virtue can only flourish among equals.

— Mary Wollstonecraft

What but a pestilential vapor can hover over society when its chief director is only instructed in the invention of crimes, or the stupid routine of childish ceremonies?

— 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

Who made man the exclusive judge, if woman partake with him the gift of reason? In this style, argue tyrants of every denomination, from the weak king to the weak father of a family; they are all eager to crush reason; yet always assert that they usurp its throne only to be useful.

— Mary Wollstonecraft