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.

• The divine right of husbands, like the divine right of kings, may, it is hoped, in this enlightened age, be contested without danger.
• In every age there has been a stream of popular opinion that has carried all before it, and given a family character, as it were, to the century.
• 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.
• Men and women must be educated, in a great degree, by the opinions and manners of the society they live in.
• Virtue can only flourish among equals.
• In every age there has been a stream of popular opinion that has carried all before it, and given a family character, as it were, to the century.
• 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.
• Women ought to have representatives, instead of being arbitrarily governed without any direct share allowed them in the deliberations of government.
• No man chooses evil because it is evil he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks.
• Learn from me, if not by my precepts, then by my example, how dangerous is the pursuit of knowledge and how much happier is that man who believes his native town to be the world than he who aspires to be greater than his nature will allow.