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

Make women rational creatures, and free citizens, and they will quickly become good wives; - that is, if men do not neglect the duties of husbands and fathers.

The being cannot be termed rational or virtuous, who obeys any authority, but that of reason.

I do earnestly wish to see the distinction of sex confounded in society, unless where love animates the behaviour.

I love my 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.

The beginning is always today.

Taught from 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.

Surely something resides in this heart that is not perishable - and life is more than a dream.

Strengthen the female mind by enlarging it, and there will be an end to blind obedience.

Slavery to monarchs and ministers, which the world will be long freeing itself from, and whose deadly grasp stops the progress of the human mind, is not yet abolished.

Nothing contributes so much to tranquilizing the mind as a steady purpose - a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye.

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

Men and women must be educated, in a great degree, by the opinions and manners of the society they live in.

The divine right of husbands, like the divine right of kings, may, it is hoped, in this enlightened age, be contested without danger.

Learn from me, if not by my precepts, then by my example, how dangerous is the pursuit of knowledge and how much happier is that man who believes his native town to be the world than he who aspires to be greater than his nature will allow.