Maria Quotes

“She was ashamed at feeling disappointed; and began to reflect, as an excuse to herself, on the little objects which attract attention when there is nothing to divert the mind; and how difficult it was for women to avoid growing romantic, who have no active duties or pursuits.”
― Mary Wollstonecraft, Maria: or, The Wrongs of Woman

“Every glance afforded colouring for the picture she was delineating on her heart.”
― Mary Wollstonecraft, Maria: or, The Wrongs of Woman

“Maria was not permitted to walk in the garden; but sometimes, from her window, she turned her eyes from the gloomy walls, in which she pined life away, on the poor wretches who strayed along the walks, and contemplated the most terrific of ruins — that of a human soul.”
― Mary Wollstonecraft, Maria: or, The Wrongs of Woman

“Pygmalion formed an ivory maid, and longed for an informing soul. She, on the contrary, combined all the qualities of a hero's mind, and fate presented a statue in which she might enshrine them.”
― Mary Wollstonecraft, Maria, or the Wrongs of Woman

“True sensibility, the sensibility which is the auxiliary of virtue, and the soul of genius, is in society so occupied with the feelings of others, as scarcely to regard its own sensations.”
― Mary Wollstonecraft, Maria: or, The Wrongs of Woman

“A magic lamp now seemed to be suspended in Maria’s prison, and fairy landscapes flitted round the gloomy walls, late so blank. Rushing from the depth of despair, on the seraph wing of hope, she found herself happy.— She was beloved, and every emotion was rapturous.”
― Mary Wollstonecraft, Maria: or, The Wrongs of Woman

“Thinking it selfish to dwell on her own sufferings, when in the midst of wretches, who had not only lost all that endears life, but their very selves, her imagination was occupied with melancholy earnestness to trace the mazes of misery, through which so many wretches must have passed to this gloomy receptacle of disjointed souls, to the grand source of human corruption.”
― Mary Wollstonecraft, Maria: or, The Wrongs of Woman

“By allowing women but one way of rising in the world, the fostering the libertinism of men, society makes monsters of them, and then their ignoble vices are brought forward as a proof of inferiority of intellect.”
― Mary Wollstonecraft, Maria: or, The Wrongs of Woman

“we must all be in love once in our lives”
― Mary Wollstonecraft, Maria: or, The Wrongs of Woman

“...or like the flash which divides the threatening clouds of angry heaven only to display the horror which darkness shrouded”
― Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary / The Wrongs of Woman

“She would stand and behold the waves rolling, and think of the voice that could still the tumultuous deep.”
― Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary / The Wrongs of Woman

“A woman neglected by her husband, or whose manners form a striking contrast with his, will always have men on the watch to soothe and flatter her. Besides, the forlorn state of a neglected woman, not destitute of personal charms, is particularly interesting, and rouses that species of pity, which is so near akin, it easily slides into love. A man of feeling thinks not of seducing, he is himself seduced by all the noblest emotions of his soul. He figures to himself all the sacrifices a woman of sensibility must make, and every situation in which his imagination places her, touches his heart, and fires his passions. Longing to take to his bosom the shorn lamb, and bid the drooping buds of hope revive, benevolence changes into passion: and should he then discover that he is beloved, honour binds him fast, though foreseeing that he may afterwards be obliged to pay severe damages to the man, who never appeared to value his wife’s society, till he found that there was a chance of his being indemnified for the loss of it.”
― Mary Wollstonecraft, Maria: or, The Wrongs of Woman

“Was not the world a vast prison, and women born slaves?”
― Mary Wollstonecraft, Maria: or, The Wrongs of Woman

“Reflection,' I replied, "had only confirmed my purpose, and no power on earth could divert me from it.”
― Mary Wollstonecraft, Maria: or, The Wrongs of Woman

“For myself, never encouraging any of the advances that were made to me, my lovers dropped off like the untimely shoots of spring. I did not even coquet with them; because I found, on examining myself, I could not coquet with a man without loving him a little; and I perceived that I should not be able to stop at the line of what are termed innocent freedoms, did I suffer any.”
― Mary Wollstonecraft, Maria: or, The Wrongs of Woman