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A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
Mary Wollstonecraft
Top 10 Best Quotes
“I do not wish them [women] to have power over men; but over themselves.”
“My own sex, I hope, will excuse me, if I treat them like rational creatures, instead of flattering their fascinating graces, and viewing them as if they were in a state of perpetual childhood, unable to stand alone.”
“[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.”
“Strengthen the female mind by enlarging it, and there will be an end to blind obedience.”
“It is time to effect a revolution in female manners - time to restore to them their lost dignity - and make them, as a part of the human species, labour by reforming themselves to reform the world. It is time to separate unchangeable morals from local manners.”
“I love man as my fellow; but his scepter, real, or usurped, extends not to me, unless the reason of an individual demands my homage; and even then the submission is to reason, and not to man.”
“I earnestly wish to point out in what true dignity and human happiness consists. I wish to persuade women to endeavor to acquire strength, both of mind and body, and to convince them that the soft phrases, susceptibility of heart, delicacy of sentiment, and refinement of taste, are almost synonymous with epithets of weakness, and that those beings are only the objects of pity, and that kind of love which has been termed its sister, will soon become objects of contempt.”
“...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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Book Keywords:
virtue, strength, double-standards, reform, dignity, inferiority, feminism, women-s-rights, women, beauty, freedom, superiority, gender, power, equality, inequality, self-sufficiency, hypocrisy, empowerment, intelligence, submission, morality, conditioning, stereotypes, social-norms, achievement, happiness, history, flattery, weakness, distinction, misogyny, contempt, rationality, men, self-determination, gentleness, greatness, manners, womens-rights, independence, clichés, reason