Mary Wollstonecraft Quotes About Weakness

Quotes about: Weakness

• It would be an endless task to trace the variety of meannesses, cares, and sorrows into which women are plunged by the prevailing opinion that they were created rather to feel than reason, and that all the power they obtain must be obtained by their charms and weaknesses.

  Mary Wollstonecraft

  Justice, Diversity, Sorrow

  A Vindication of the Rights of Woman ch. 4 (1792)

• 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.

  Mary Wollstonecraft

  Heart, Mind, Wish

  Mary Wollstonecraft (2012). “Mary, A Fiction and The Wrongs of Woman, or Maria”, p.303, Broadview Press

• Weakness may excite tenderness, and gratify the arrogant pride of man; but the lordly caresses of a protector will not gratify a noble mind that pants for, and deserves to be respected. Fondness is a poor substitute for friendship.

  Mary Wollstonecraft

  Pride, Men, Mind

  Mary Wollstonecraft, Janet Todd (1999). “A Vindication of the Rights of Men; A Vindication of the Rights of Woman; An Historical and Moral View of the French Revolution”, p.95, Oxford Paperbacks

• Children, I grant, should be innocent; but when the epithet is applied to men, or women, it is but a civil term for weakness.

  Mary Wollstonecraft

  Children, Women, Weakness

  Mary Wollstonecraft (2013). “Vindication of the Rights of Women”, p.17, Lulu.com

• Women deluded by these sentiments, sometimes boast of their weakness, cunningly obtaining power by playing on the weakness of men; and they may well glory in their illicit sway, for, like Turkish bashaws, they have more real power than their masters: but virtue is sacrificed to temporary gratifications, and the respectability of life to the triumph of an hour.

  Mary Wollstonecraft

  Real, Men, May

  Mary Wollstonecraft (1796). “A vindication of the rights of woman: with strictures on political and moral subjects”, p.80

• Men with common minds seldom break through general rules. Prudence is ever the resort of weakness; and they rarely go as far as as they may in any undertaking, who are determined not to go beyond it on any account.

  Mary Wollstonecraft

  Men, Break Through, Mind

  Mary Wollstonecraft (2016). “Delphi Complete Works of Mary Wollstonecraft (Illustrated)”, p.1034, Delphi Classics

• I am a strange compound of weakness and resolution! However, if I must suffer, I will endeavour to suffer in silence. There is certainly a great defect in my mind my wayward heart creates its own misery Why I am made thus I cannot tell; and, till I can form some idea of the whole of my existence, I must be content to weep and dance like a child long for a toy, and be tired of it as soon as I get it.

  Mary Wollstonecraft

  Children, Tired, Heart

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin