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!
Love is a wonderful, terrible thing
Love's first snow-drop, virgin kiss.
The lover's fatal identity is precisely this: I am the one who waits.
She wasn't in love but she would love him, if that would save her.
I believe that at the center of the universe there dwells a loving spirit who longs for all that’s best in all of creation, a spirit who knows the great potential of each planet as well as each person, and little by little will love us into being more than we ever dreamed possible. That loving spirit would rather die than give up on any one of us.
Lovers embrace that which is between them rather than each other.
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