A Vindication of the Rights of a Woman Quotes

“It is time to effect a revolution in female manners.”

“Girls who have been thus weakly educated, are often cruelly left by their parents without any provision.”

“Would ye, O my sisters, really possess modesty . . . ye must acquire that soberness of mind, which the exercise of duties, and the pursuit of knowledge, alone inspire, or ye will remain in a doubtful dependent situation, and only be loved whilst ye are fair!”

“Women, I allow, may have different duties to fulfil; but they are human duties, and the principles that should regulate the discharge of them, I sturdily maintain, must be the same.”

“To say the truth women are, in general, too familiar with each other, which leads to that gross degree of familiarity that so frequently renders the marriage state unhappy.”

“Let woman share the rights and she will emulate the virtues of man.”

“Besides, how should a woman void of reflection be capable of educating her children?”

“Nature, in these respects, may safely be left to herself; let women only acquire knowledge and humanity, and love will teach them modesty.”

“Firmly persuaded that no evil exists in the world that God did not design to take place, I build my belief on the perfection of God.”

“I do earnestly wish to see the distinction of sex confounded in society.”

“I am fully persuaded that we should hear of none of these infantine airs, if girls were allowed to take sufficient exercise, and not confined in close rooms till their muscles are relaxed, and their powers of digestion destroyed.”

“How much more respectable is the woman who earns her own bread by fulfilling any duty, than the most accomplished beauty!”

“The same love of pleasure, fostered by the whole tendency of their education, gives a trifling turn to the conduct of women in most circumstances.”

“Girls are from the earliest infancy fond of dress. Not content with being pretty, they are desirous of being thought so.”

“Sense will always preponderate; and if women be not, in general, brought more on a level with men, some superiour women, like the Greek courtezans, will assemble the men of abilities around them, and draw from their families many citizens, who would have stayed at home had their wives more sense.”

“This is the very point I aim at. I do not wish them [women] to have power over men; but over themselves.”

“The management of the temper, the first, and most important branch of education, requires the sober steady eye of reason.”

“Civilized women are, therefore, so weakened by false refinement, that, respecting morals, their condition is much below what it would be were they left in a state nearer to nature.”

“Women are always to seem to be this and that.”

“Most prospects in life are marred by the shuffling worldly wisdom of men, who, forgetting that they cannot serve God and mammon, endeavor to blend contradictory things.”

Women, I allow, may have different duties to fulfil; but they are human duties, and the principles that should regulate the discharge of them, I sturdily maintain, must be the same.

“The fact is, that men expect from education, what education cannot give.”

Women, I allow, may have different duties to fulfil; but they are human duties, and the principles that should regulate the discharge of them, I sturdily maintain, must be the same.