Some celebrated writers have supposed that wit and judgment were incompatible; opposite qualities, that, in a kind of elementary s...trife, destroyed each other: and many men of wit have endeavored to prove that they were mistaken. Much may be adduced by wits and metaphysicians on both sides of the question. But from experience, I am apt to believe that they do weaken each other, and that great quickness of comprehension, and facile association of ideas, naturally preclude profundity of research. Wit is often a lucky hit; the result of a momentary inspiration. We know not whence it comes, and it blows where it lists. The operations of judgment, on the contrary, are cool and circumspect; and coolness and deliberation are great enemies to enthusiasm.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
How many women ... waste life away the prey of discontent, who might have practised as physicians, regulated a farm, managed a sho...p, and stood erect, supported by their own industry, instead of hanging their heads surcharged with the dew of sensibility, that consumes the beauty to which it at first gave lustre ...LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Women have seldom sufficient employment to silence their feelings; a round of little cares, or vain pursuits frittering away all s...trength of mind and organs, they become naturally only objects of sense.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is vain to expect virtue from women till they are, in some degree, independent of men ... Whilst they are absolutely dependent ...on their husbands they will be cunning, mean, and selfish, and the men who can be gratified by the fawning fondness of spaniel-like affection, have not much delicacy, for love is not to be bought, in any sense of the words, its silken wings are instantly shrivelled up when any thing beside a return in kind is sought.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... to improve both sexes they ought, not only in private families, but in public schools, to be educated together. If marriage be... the cement of society, mankind should all be educated after the same model, or the intercourse of the sexes will never deserve the name of fellowship ...LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Hereditary property sophisticates the mind, and the unfortunate victims to it ... swathed from their birth, seldom exert the locom...otive faculty of body or mind; and, thus viewing every thing through one medium, and that a false one, they are unable to discern in what true merit and happiness consist.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »