Date: 1777
"Study, as it rescues the mind from an inordinate fondness for gaming, dress, and public amusements, is an oeconomical propensity; for a lady may read at much less expence than she can play at cards; as it requires some application, it gives the mind an habit of industry; as it is a relief agains...
preview | full record— More, Hannah (1745-1833)
Date: 1777
"It is true, the mind, as well as the eye, can take in objects larger than itself; but this is only true of great minds: for a man of low capacity, who considers a consummate genius, resembles one, who seeing a column for the first time, and standing at too great a distance to take in the whole o...
preview | full record— More, Hannah (1745-1833)
Date: 1777
"Good sense has not so piercing an eye, but it has as clear a sight: it does not penetrate so deeply, but as far as it does see, it discerns distinctly."
preview | full record— More, Hannah (1745-1833)
Date: December 1790
"The man has been changed into an artificial monster by the station in which he was born, and the consequent homage that benumbed his faculties like the torpedo’s touch."
preview | full record— Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)
Date: December 1790
"The mewing babe in swaddling-clothes, who is treated like a superior being, may perchance become a gentleman; but nature must have given him uncommon faculties if, when pleasure hangs on every bough, he has sufficient fortitude either to exercise his mind or body in order to acquire personal mer...
preview | full record— Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)
Date: December 1790
"The exercise of our faculties is the great end, though not the goal we had in view when we started with such eagerness."
preview | full record— Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)
Date: December 1790
"The vulgar have not the power of emptying their mind of the only ideas they imbibed whilst their hands were employed; they cannot quickly turn from one kind of life to another."
preview | full record— Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)
Date: December 1790
"A few fundamental truths meet the first enquiry of reason, and appear as clear to an unwarped mind, as that air and bread are necessary to enable the body to fulfil its vital functions; but the opinions which men discuss with so much heat must be simplified and brought back to first principles; ...
preview | full record— Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)
Date: December 1790
"Perhaps the most improving exercise of the mind, confining the argument to the enlargement of the understanding, is the restless enquiries that hover on the boundary, or stretch over the dark abyss of uncertainty."
preview | full record— Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)
Date: 1792
"Yet disappointed as we are, in our researches, the mind gains strength by the exercise, sufficient, perhaps, to comprehend the answers which, in another step of existence, it may receive to the anxious questions it asked, when the understanding with feeble wing was fluttering round the visible e...
preview | full record— Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)