Mary Astell Quotes

• Women need not take up with mean things, since (if they are not wanting to themselves) they are capable of the best.

  Mary Astell

• Women are not so well united as to form an Insurrection. They are for the most part wise enough to love their Chains, and to discern how becomingly they fit.

  Mary Astell

• Women are from their very infancy debarred those Advantages with the want of which they are afterwards reproached.

  Mary Astell

• Why is Slavery so much condemn’d and strove against in one Case, and so highly applauded and held so necessary and so sacred in another?

  Mary Astell

• Whilst our Hearts are violently set upon any thing, there is no convincing us that we shall ever be of another Mind.

  Mary Astell

• We ought as much as we can to endeavour the Perfecting of our Beings, and that we be as happy as possibly we may.

  Mary Astell

• We must Think what we Say, and Mean what we Profess.

  Mary Astell

• We may not commit a lesser Sin under pretence to avoid a greater, but we may, nay we ought to endure the greatest Pain and Grief rather than commit the least Sin.

  Mary Astell

• We all agree that its fit to be as Happy as we can, and we need no Instructor to teach us this Knowledge, ’tis born with us, and is inseparable from our Being, but we very much need to be Inform’d what is the true Way to Happiness.

  Mary Astell

• Upon the principles of reason, the good of many is preferable to the good of a few or of one; a lasting good is to be preferred before a temporary, the public before the private.

  Mary Astell

• Unhappy is that Grandeur which makes us too great to be good; and that Wit which sets us at a distance from true Wisdom.

  Mary Astell

• Truth is strong, and sometime or other will prevail.

  Mary Astell

• To plead for the Oppress’d and to defend the Weak seem’d to me a generous undertaking; for tho’ it may be secure, ’tis not always Honourable to run over to the strongest party.

  Mary Astell

• To all the rest of his Absurdities, (for vice is always unreasonable,) he adds one more, who expects that Vertue from another which he won’t practise himself.

  Mary Astell

• ‘Tis very great pity that they who are so apt to over-rate themselves in smaller matters, shou’d, where it most concerns them to know, and stand upon their Value, be so insensible of their own worth.

  Mary Astell

• The Steps to Folly as well as Sin are gradual, and almost imperceptible, and when we are once on the Decline, we go down without taking notice on’t.

  Mary Astell

• The Span of Life is too short to be trifled away in unconcerning and unprofitable Matters.

  Mary Astell

• The Soul debases her self, when she sets her affections on any thing but her creator.

  Mary Astell

• The scum of the People are most Tyrannical when they get the Power, and treat their Betters with the greatest Insolence.

  Mary Astell

• The Relation we bear to the Wisdom of the Father, the Son of His Love, gives us indeed a dignity which otherwise we have no pretence to. It makes us something, something considerable even in God’s Eyes.

  Mary Astell

Mary Astell (54)

Birth:	12th November, 1666
Death:	11th May, 1731
Nationality:	British
Profession:	Writer

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Today's Anniversary - 23rd January

Births

• 1897 - William Stephenson
• 1947 - Megawati Sukarnoputri
• 1953 - Antonio Villaraigosa
• 1915 - Potter Stewart
• 1923 - Walter Miller

Deaths

• 2003 - Nell Carter
• 1943 - Alexander Woollcott
• 1806 - William Pitt
• 2007 - Ryszard Kapuscinski
• 2002 - Pierre Bourdieu