5 quotations linked to Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark by or associated with Mary Wollstonecraft, with source notes, explanations and related topics.
Liberty, self-knowledge, nature, mortality, friendship, commerce, power, experience and the emotional interpretation of travel.
Use these links when you want to inspect the wording in its wider work or edition.
“men with common minds seldom break through general rules.”
The travel reflection criticizes automatic conformity, suggesting that ordinary caution can keep people from testing whether a rule still makes sense in a particular situation.
Source note: Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, Letter I; Wollstonecraft comments on a sea captain’s reluctance to depart from customary practice.
“Thinking of death makes us tenderly cling to our affections.”
Awareness of mortality intensifies attachment by reminding a person that relationships and opportunities for affection are finite.
Source note: Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark; Wollstonecraft connects thoughts of death with renewed tenderness toward human attachments.
“the tyranny of wealth is still more galling and debasing than that of rank.”
Wollstonecraft warns that replacing hereditary rank with concentrated economic power does not automatically secure meaningful liberty.
Source note: Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, Letter XIV; the sentence follows her claim that commerce helped undermine feudal power in England and America.
“The contemplation of noble ruins produces a melancholy that exalts the mind.”
Ruins become a prompt for reflective melancholy: visible traces of the past enlarge thought by placing present concerns against time, mortality, and historical change.
Source note: Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark; the remark occurs during Wollstonecraft’s reflections on landscape, ruins, history, and mortality.
“What a long time it requires to know ourselves, and yet every one has more of this knowledge than he is willing to own.”
Self-knowledge develops slowly, and the second clause suggests that people may resist acknowledging what experience has already taught them about their own motives or limitations.
Source note: Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark; a first-person travel reflection on self-knowledge and experience.