“They may be convenient slaves, but slavery will have its constant effect, degrading the master and the abject dependent.”

“Women are systematically degraded by receiving the trivial attentions which men think it manly to pay to their sex, when, in fact, men are insultingly supporting their own superiority.”

“Love from its very nature must be transitory. To seek for a secret that would render it constant would be as wild a search as for the philosopher’s stone or the grand panacea: and the discovery would be equally useless, or rather pernicious to mankind. The most holy band of society is friendship.”

“A virtuous man may have a choleric or a sanguine constitution, be gay or grave, unreproved, be firm till he is almost over-bearing, or weakly subsmissive, have no will or opinion of his own; but all women are to be levelled, by meekness and docility, into one character of yielding softness and gentle compliance”

“It is time to effect a revolution in female manners - time to restore to them their lost dignity - and make them, as a part of the human species, labour by reforming themselves to reform the world. It is time to separate unchangeable morals from local manners.”

“If we pant after higher improvement and higher attainments, it is not sufficient to view ourselves as we suppose that we are viewed by others. . . . Because each by-stander may have his own prejudices, beside the prejudices of his age or country. We should rather endeavor to view ourselves as we suppose that Being views [us].”

“Weakness may excite tenderness, and gratify the arrogant pride of man; but the lordly caresses of a protector will not gratify a noble mind that pants for, and deserves to be respected. Fondness is a poor substitute for friendship.”