Mary Wollstonecraft — "To be useful is more honorable than to be ornamental."
To be useful is more honorable than to be ornamental.
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More from Mary Wollstonecraft
"Friendship is a serious affection; the most sublime of all affections, because it is founded on principle, and cemented by time."
"I have a heart that is too tender to be wounded."
"The desire of appearing beautiful is a very natural one, and should be encouraged, though it cannot be satisfied by art."
"I would fain persuade women to endeavor to acquire strength, both of mind and body."
"To be independent of public opinion, is the first step towards dignity."
About Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797)
English writer and proto-feminist philosopher whose A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) is the founding text of modern feminist theory. Closely associated with Thomas Paine (Rights of Man co-conspirator and revolutionary contemporary) and William Godwin (her husband and philosopher of anarchism). For an intellectual contrast, see Edmund Burke, Anglo-Irish conservative and parliamentarian — Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) was the explicit target of Wollstonecraft's first book — A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790), written in the weeks after Burke's appeared. She extended the argument to women in her second Vindication two years later. Burke's tradition-and-prescription conservatism is the worldview Wollstonecraft's career was structured against.