Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark Quotes by Mary Wollstonecraft: Context & Meanings

Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, Letter I; represented Cassell & Company 1889 text in Project Gutenberg #3529, preserving Wollstonecraft’s 1796 travel-letter work. After describing the customary maritime rule against sending out a boat, Wollstonecraft says that “men with common minds seldom break through general rules” while criticizing the captain’s reluctance to depart from convention. This is a first-person travel judgment about a particular situation, not a general empirical claim about ordinary people.

Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, Letter VII; represented Cassell & Company 1889 text in Project Gutenberg #3529. “Thinking of death makes us tenderly cling to our affections” closes the same meditation on mortality and immediately becomes a personal assurance to the recipient of the letter. The line remains first-person epistolary reflection, not a universal clinical claim about bereavement or attachment.

Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, Letter XIV; represented Cassell & Company 1889 text in Project Gutenberg #3529. After arguing that commerce helped England and America undermine feudal power, Wollstonecraft warns that “the tyranny of wealth is still more galling and debasing than that of rank.” This remains historical political-economic reflection within the travel letters rather than present-day financial or legal guidance.

Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, Letter VII; represented Cassell & Company 1889 text in Project Gutenberg #3529. “The contemplation of noble ruins produces a melancholy that exalts the mind” occurs during Wollstonecraft’s visit to a church recess containing long-preserved bodies and her reflections on death, ruins, historical change and mortality. It remains Romantic-era reflective prose rather than a modern psychological finding about melancholy.

Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, Letter IX; represented Cassell & Company 1889 text in Project Gutenberg #3529. The frozen catalog reads “What a long time it requires to know ourselves, and yet every one has more of this knowledge than he is willing to own,” while the represented witness reads “What a long time it requires to know ourselves; and yet almost every one has more of this knowledge than he is willing to own, even to himself.” This collection retains its legacy shortened wording and explicitly records the omitted “almost” / closing phrase rather than silently rewriting it. Wollstonecraft is reflecting on her own solitude, experience and knowledge of the heart.