Browse 7 quotations connecting Mary Wollstonecraft with Responsibility, with meanings, source notes and related themes.
Each quotation is included because its central idea connects with this theme, not simply because one matching word appears in the sentence.
Sources represented here include Thoughts on the Education of Daughters, A Vindication of the Rights of Men, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Keeping the work and source note beside each quotation makes differences in setting, speaker and emphasis easier to see.
Sources represented here include Thoughts on the Education of Daughters, A Vindication of the Rights of Men, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.
“Reverencing the rights of humanity, I shall dare to assert them.”
Wollstonecraft presents public argument as an obligation to defend human rights even when ridicule or social pressure makes such advocacy uncomfortable.
Source note: A Vindication of the Rights of Men, opening pages; the sentence immediately follows her statement that she contends for the rights of men and liberty of reason.
“truly sublime is the character that acts from principle, and governs the inferior springs of activity without slackening their vigour;”
The passage praises principled character that can use emotion and energy without allowing immediate feeling to overrule deliberate judgment.
Source note: A Vindication of the Rights of Men; this clause appears in Wollstonecraft’s contrast between habit, manipulated passion, and a character governed by principle.
“It is justice, not charity, that is wanting in the world!”
The problem is framed as structural fairness rather than occasional benevolence: charity cannot substitute for restoring dignity and rights.
Source note: A Vindication of the Rights of Woman; the sentence appears during a discussion of social conditions that punish women while leaving the underlying injustice intact.
“Women, I allow, may have different duties to fulfil; but they are human duties, and the principles that should regulate the discharge of them, I sturdily maintain, must be the same.”
Different roles do not require different moral standards; Wollstonecraft argues for common principles of responsibility and virtue.
Source note: A Vindication of the Rights of Woman; the passage rejects a separate moral standard built around sex rather than shared human duties.
“We should never give pain without a design to amend.”
Correction should aim at improvement rather than humiliation; causing pain without a constructive purpose turns discipline into unnecessary cruelty.
Source note: Thoughts on the Education of Daughters, discussion of temper and discipline; Wollstonecraft argues against needless severity.
“The governing of our temper is truly the business of our whole lives.”
Emotional self-command is not a childhood lesson completed once; it remains a lifelong practice because new circumstances continually test established habits.
Source note: Thoughts on the Education of Daughters, section on the temper; Wollstonecraft treats regulation of temper as continuous work.
“It is the duty of a parent to preserve a child from receiving wrong impressions.”
Early impressions can become durable habits of judgment, so parents carry responsibility for the examples, expectations, and environments surrounding a child.
Source note: Thoughts on the Education of Daughters, discussion of early education and moral discipline.