Date: 1792

"The pure animal spirits, which make both mind and body shoot out, and unfold the tender blossoms of hope, are turned sour, and vented in vain wishes or pert repinings, that contract the faculties and spoil the temper."

— Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)

Date: 1792

"Yet, when I exclaim against novels, I mean when contrasted with those works which exercise the understanding and regulate the imagination."

— Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)

Date: 1792

"The senses and the imagination give a form to the character, during childhood and youth; and the understanding, as life advances, gives firmness to the first fair purposes of sensibility, till virtue, arising rather from the clear conviction of reason than the impulses of the heart, morality is ...

— Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)

Date: 1792

"Man, taking her body, the mind is left to rust; so that while physical love enervates man, as being his favourite recreation, he will endeavour to enslave woman."

— Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)

Date: 1792

"In this style argue tyrants of every denomination, from the weak king to the weak father of a family; they are all eager to crush reason, yet always assert that they usurp its throne only to be useful."

— Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)

Date: 1792

"So ductile is the understanding, and yet so stubborn, that the associations which depend on adventitious circumstances, during the period that the body takes to arrive at maturity, can seldom be disentangled by reason."

— Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)

Date: 1792

"One idea calls up another, its old associate, and memory, faithful to the first impressions, particularly when the intellectual powers are not employed to cool our sensations, retraces them with mechanical exactness."

— Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)

Date: 1792

"This habitual slavery, to first impressions, has a more baneful effect on the female than the male character, because business and other dry employments of the understanding, tend to deaden the feelings and break associations that do violence to reason."

— Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)

Date: 1792

"Thus degraded, her reason, her misty reason! is employed rather to burnish than to snap her chains."

— Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)

Date: 1792

"For any kind of reading, I think better than leaving a blank still blank, because the mind must receive a degree of enlargement and obtain a little strength by a slight exertion of its thinking powers."

— Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)