Mary Wollstonecraft Quotes

Friendship is a serious affection the most sublime of all affections because it is founded on principle and cemented by time. The very reverse may be said of love. In a great degree love and friendship cannot subsist in the same bosom even when inspired by different objects they weaken or destroy each other and for the same object can only be felt in succession. The vain fears and fond jealousies the winds which fan the flame of love when judiciously or artfully tempered are both incompatible with the tender confidence and sincere respect of friendship.

But the days of true heroism are over, when a citizen fought for his country like a Fabricius or a Washington, and then returned to his farm to let his virtuous fervour run in a more placid, but not less salutary, stream.

How can a rational being be ennobled by any thing that is not obtained by its own exertions?

Solitude and reflection are necessary to give to wishes the force of passions.

Let us eat, drink, and love for tomorrow we die, would be in fact the language of reason, the morality of life; and who but a fool would part with a reality for a fleeting shadow?

It is justice, not charity, that is wanting in the world!

I never wanted but your heart--that gone, you have nothing more to give.

Only that education deserves emphatically to be termed cultivation of the mind which teaches young people how to begin to think.