I do not wish them [women] to have power over men; but over themselves.
[I]f we revert to history, we shall find that the women who have distinguished themselves have neither been the most beautiful nor the most gentle of their sex.
Taught from their 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.
It is vain to expect virtue from women till they are in some degree independent of men.
No man chooses evil because it is evil; he just mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks.
I never wanted but your heart--that gone, you have nothing more to give.
Friendship is a serious affection; the most sublime of all affections, because it is founded on principle, and cemented by time.
Strengthen the female mind by enlarging it, and there will be an end to blind obedience.
Simplicity and sincerity generally go hand in hand, as both proceed from a love of truth.
Surely something resides in this heart that is not perishable - and life is more than a dream.
But what a weak barrier is truth when it stands in the way of an hypothesis!
... judicious books enlarge the mind and improve the heart ...
How can a rational being be ennobled by any thing that is not obtained by its own exertions?
Independence I have long considered as the grand blessing of life, the basis of every virtue; and independence I will ever secure by contracting my wants, though I were to live on a barren heath.
My husband - my king.
Women are systematically degraded by receiving the trivial attentions which men think it manly to pay to their sex, when, in fact, men are insultingly supporting their own superiority.
They may be convenient slaves, but slavery will have its constant effect, degrading the master and the abject dependent.
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.
What but a pestilential vapour can hover over society when its chief director is only instructed in the invention of crimes, or the stupid routine of childish ceremonies?
I like to see your eyes praise me and, during such recitals, there are interruptions, not ungrateful to the heart, when the honey that drops from the lips is not merely words.
Those who are bold enough to advance before the age they live in...must learn to brave censure.
Only that education deserves emphatically to be termed cultivation of the mind which teaches young people how to begin to think.
Every glance afforded colouring for the picture she was delineating on her heart.
But let me now stop; I may be a little partial, and view every thing with the jaundiced eye of melancholy - for I am sad - and have cause.
And having no fear of the devil before my eyes, I venture to call this a suggestion of reason, instead of resting my weakness on the broad shoulders of the first seducer of my frail sex.
Čovječnost ne postoji "u preosjetljivu uhu", rekao je jedan istaknuti govornik. "Ona pripada umu i živcima.
Taxes on the very necessaries of life, enable an endless tribe of idle princes and princesses to pass with stupid pomp before a gaping crowd, who almost worship the very parade which costs them so dear.
True sensibility, the sensibility which is the auxiliary of virtue, and the soul of genius, is in society so occupied with the feelings of others, as scarcely to regard its own sensations.
Without the aid of the imagination all the pleasures of the senses must sink into grossness.
