“O my unenlightened country-women! read, and profit by the admonition of Reason. Shake off the trifling, glittering shackles which debase you.”

Urging women to reject vanity and claim mental equality through education · Essay, A Letter to the Women of England on the Injustice of Mental Subordination, 1799

• Education
• Freedom
• Women

“The barbarity of custom’s law in this enlightened country has long been exercised to the prejudice of woman: and even the laws of honour have been perverted to oppress her.”

Condemning double standards that leave women without remedy against slander · Essay, A Letter to the Women of England on the Injustice of Mental Subordination, 1799

• Honour
• Injustice
• Women

“I cannot conclude these opinions without paying tribute to the talents of my illustrious country-women; who, unpatronized by the courts, and unprotected by the powerful, persevere in the paths of literature, and ennoble themselves by the unperishable lustre of mental pre-eminence.”

Celebrating women writers who achieve distinction without patronage · Preface, Sappho and Phaon, 1796

• Excellence
• Literature
• Women

“In order that this letter may be clearly understood, I shall proceed to prove my assertion in the strongest, but most undecorated language. I shall remind my enlightened country-women that they are not the mere appendages of domestic life, but the partners, the equal associates of man.”

Asserting women's intellectual equality against custom and prejudice · Essay, A Letter to the Women of England on the Injustice of Mental Subordination, 1799

• Equality
• Reason
• Women