Mary Wollstonecraft's reputation has suffered vicissitudes which, even in the history of genius, are unusual. Her name, during her lifetime, was lauded to the skies by one half of the reading public, and — in exactly proportional measure — vituperated by the other half. Then, for more than half a century, it was wholly forgotten, or remembered only as suggesting certain vague associations of a grotesque and not altogether decorous kind. Within the last forty years, the mists have been gradually lifting, and she stands revealed for what she was — a woman singularly original in thought and noble in character.
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Camilla Jebb, in Mary Wollstonecraft (1913)Mary Wollstonecraft
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Memento mori—remember death! These are important words. If we kept in mind that we will soon inevitably die, our lives would be completely different. If a person knows that he will die in a half hour, he certainly will not bother doing trivial, stupid, or, especially, bad things during this half hour. Perhaps you have half a century before you die—what makes this any different from a half hour?
Leo Tolstoy
In a word, the home is a little dull. When you have got a woman in a box, and you pay rent on the box, her relationship to you insensibly changes character. It loses the fine excitement of democracy. It ceases to be companionship, for companionship is only possible in a democracy. It is no longer a sharing of life together—it is a breaking of life apart. Half a life—cooking, clothes, and children; half a life—business, politics, and baseball. It doesn’t make much difference which is the poorer half. Either half, when it comes to life, is very near to none at all.
Floyd Dell
I would say probably half and half. Before you can lose any kind of weight you have to be mentally ready to do it. And then, I would say the other half was finding the right method for me, which was the Subway sandwiches. But, yes, I would say you definitely have to have both and they both have to come in line together.
Jared Fogle
I liked these men very much when I first met them on the mountain nearly a half-century ago, but I came to admire them far more in the years that followed. I thought their brand of heroism — the heroism of example, the heroism of debts repaid and causes sustained — far more inspiring than the gung-ho kind. Did it really mean much to the human race when Everest was conquered for the first time? Only because there became attached to the memory of the exploit, in the years that followed, a reputation for decency, kindness and stylish simplicity. Hillary and Tenzing fixed it when they knocked the bastard off.
Edmund Hillary
Even though Mary Wollstonecraft had little or no presence in history or literature curricula as recently as a generation ago, she has never exactly been a minor figure. Some, certainly, have wished her so. A dauntless advocate of political reform, Wollstonecraft was one of the first to vindicate the "rights of man," but in her own — brief — lifetime and ever since, she achieved notoriety principally for her championship of women's rights. And while some of this notoriety took the particular form of scandal of the sort that often attends women directly involved in public affairs, some of it she directly sought in her writing and in her conduct. Controversy always inspired Wollstonecraft, always sharpened her sense of purpose.
Mary Wollstonecraft
Wollstonecraft, Mary
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