Taught from infancy that beauty is woman's sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison.
Mary WollstonecraftRead
Love from its very nature must be transitory. To seek for a secret that would render it constant would be as wild a search as for the philosopher’s stone or the grand panacea: and the discovery would be equally useless, or rather pernicious to mankind. The most holy band of society is friendship.
Interpretation
Love is inherently fleeting, and trying to make it constant can be harmful.
In this quote, Mary Wollstonecraft reflects on the transient nature of love, suggesting that the pursuit of a way to make love everlasting is as futile as seeking the mythical philosopher's stone. She argues that such a discovery would not bring any true benefit to humanity and emphasizes that friendship is the most important and sacred bond in society.
In practice
In a discussion about the impermanence of romantic relationships.
Taught from infancy that beauty is woman's sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison.
Make women rational creatures, and free citizens, and they will quickly become good wives; - that is, if men do not neglect the duties of husbands and fathers.
But what a weak barrier is truth when it stands in the way of an hypothesis!
The divine right of husbands, like the divine right of kings, may, it is hoped, in this enlightened age, be contested without danger.
Women are degraded by the propensity to enjoy the present moment, and, at last, despise the freedom which they have not sufficient virtue to struggle to attain.
Perhaps the seeds of false-refinement, immorality, and vanity, have ever been shed by the great. Weak, artificial beings, raised above the common wants and defections of their race, in a premature and unnatural manner, undermine the very foundation of virtue, and spread corruption through the whole mass of society!
For was that all, she thought bleakly, that love ever was? Something that saved one from loneliness? A sort of insurance policy against not counting?
I want your sun to reach my raindrops, so your heat can raise my soul upward like a cloud.
Explain! Tell a man to explain how he dropped into hell! Explain my preference! I never had a PREFERENCE for her, any more than I have a preference for breathing. No other woman exists by the side of her. I would rather touch her hand if it were dead, than I would touch any other woman's living.
Just as one candle lights another and can light thousands of other candles, so one heart illuminates another heart and can illuminate thousands of other hearts.
You learn to speak by speaking, to study by studying, to run by running, to work by working; in just the same way, you learn to love by loving.
And may my bronze name / touch always her thousand fingers / grow brighter with her weeping / until I am fixed like a galaxy / and memorized / in her secret and fragile skies.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.