The use of knowledge in our sex (beside the amusement of solitude) is to moderate the passions and learn to be contented with a sm...all expense, which are the certain effects of a studious life and, it may be, preferable even to that fame which men have engrossed to themselves and will not suffer us to share.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In benevolent natures the impulse to pity is so sudden, that like instruments of music which obey the touch ... you would think th...e will was scarce concerned, and that the mind was altogether passive in the sympathy which her own goodness has excited. The truth is,--the soul is [so] ... wholly engrossed by the object of pity, that she does not ... take leisure to examine the principles upon which she acts.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... my one aim and concentrated purpose shall be and is to show that women can learn, can reason, can compete with men in the gran...d fields of literature and science ... that a woman can be a woman and a true one without having all her time engrossed by dress and society.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I cannot help fearing that men may reach a point where they look on every new theory as a danger, every innovation as a toilsome t...rouble, every social advance as a first step toward revolution, and that they may absolutely refuse to move at all for fear of being carried off their feet. The prospect really does frighten me that they may finally become so engrossed in a cowardly love of immediate pleasures that their interest in their own future and in that of their descendants may vanish, and that they will prefer tamely to follow the course of their destiny rather than make a sudden energetic effort necessary to set things right.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »