Standing armies can never consist of resolute robust men; they may be well-disciplined machines, but they will seldom contain men under the influence of strong passions, or with very vigorous faculties. - (Wollstonecraft, Mary - Army and Navy)

Taught from infancy that beauty is woman's scepter, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison. - (Wollstonecraft, Mary - Beauty)

No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness. - (Wollstonecraft, Mary - Evil)

If the abstract rights of man will bear discussion and explanation, those of women, by a parity of reasoning, will not shrink from the same test: though a different opinion prevails in this country. - (Wollstonecraft, Mary - Feminism)

Independence I have long considered as the grand blessing of life, the basis of every virtue; and independence I will ever secure by contracting my wants, though I were to live on a barren heath. - (Wollstonecraft, Mary - Independence)

Children, I grant, should be innocent; but when the epithet is applied to men, or women, it is but a civil term for weakness. - (Wollstonecraft, Mary - Innocence)

Women are told from their infancy, and taught by the example of their mothers, that a little knowledge of human weakness, justly termed cunning, softness of temper, outward obedience and a scrupulous attention to a puerile kind of propriety, will obtain for them the protection of man. - (Wollstonecraft, Mary - Men and Women)