Mary Astell Quotes
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For certainly there cannot be a higher pleasure than to think that we love and are beloved by the most amiable and best Being.
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She must be a fool with a witness, who can believe a man, proud and vain as he is, will lay his boasted authority, the dignity and prerogative of his sex, on moment at her feet, but in prospect of taking it up again to more advantage; he may call himself her slave a few days, but it is only in order to make her his all the rest of his life.
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We all agree that its fit to be as Happy as we can, and we need no Instructor to teach us this Knowledge, 'tis born with us, and is inseparable from our Being, but we very much need to be Inform'd what is the true Way to Happiness.
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Your glass will not do you half so much service as a serious reflection on your own minds.
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If all men are born free, how is it that all women are born slaves?
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Women are not so well united as to form an Insurrection. They are for the most part wise enough to love their Chains, and to discern how becomingly they fit.
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Hitherto I have courted Truth with a kind of Romantick Passion, in spite of all Difficulties and Discouragements: for knowledge is thought so unnecessary an Accomplishment for a Woman, that few will give themselves the Trouble to assist us in the Attainment of it.
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Nor can the Apostle mean that Eve only sinned; or that she only was Deceived, for if Adam sinned willfully and knowingly, he became the greater Transgressor.
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Every Body has so good an Opinion of their own Understanding as to think their own way the best.
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Why is Slavery so much condemn'd and strove against in one Case, and so highly applauded and held so necessary and so sacred in another?
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None of God's Creatures absolutely consider'd are in their own Nature Contemptible; the meanest Fly, the poorest Insect has its Use and Vertue.
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He who will be just, must be forc'd to acknowledge, that neither Sex are always in the right.
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'Tis very great pity that they who are so apt to over-rate themselves in smaller matters, shou'd, where it most concerns them to know, and stand upon their Value, be so insensible of their own worth.
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If God had not intended that Women shou'd use their Reason, He wou'd not have given them any, 'for He does nothing in vain.'
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If none were to Marry, but Men of strict Vertue and Honour, I doubt the World would be but thinly peopled.
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To all the rest of his Absurdities, (for vice is always unreasonable,) he adds one more, who expects that Vertue from another which he won't practise himself.
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Women need not take up with mean things, since (if they are not wanting to themselves) they are capable of the best.
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The better our lot is in this world, and the more we have of it, the greater is our leisure to prepare for the next; we have the more opportunity to exercise that God-like quality, to taste that divine pleasure, doing good to the bodies and souls of those beneath us.
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Certain I am, that Christian Religion does no where allow Rebellion.
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None of us whether Men or Women but have so good an Opinion of our own Conduct as to believe we are fit, if not to direct others, at least to govern our selves.
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We must Think what we Say, and Mean what we Profess.
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Whilst our Hearts are violently set upon any thing, there is no convincing us that we shall ever be of another Mind.
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It is not the Head but the Heart that is the Seat of Atheism.
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If a Woman can neither Love nor Honour, she does ill in promising to Obey.