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137 quotes
SortEditorial Year Length
Topic·Men and women✕clear
Letter

It is really mortifying, sir, when a woman possessed of a common share of understanding considers the difference of education between the male and female sex, even in those families where education is attended to... Nay why should your sex wish for such a disparity in those whom they one day intend for companions and associates. Pardon me, sir, if I cannot help sometimes suspecting that this neglect arises in some measure from an ungenerous jealousy of rivals near the throne.

★ 1.1
Historical literature

Our ancestors refused to allow any woman to transact even private business without a guardian to represent her; women had to be under the control of fathers, brothers, or husbands. But we (heaven preserve us!) are now allowing them even to take part in politics, and actually to appear in the Forum and to be present at our meetings and assemblies!... Give a free rein to their unprincipled nature, to this untamed animal, and then expect them to set a limit on their own license!

Livy
Ab Urbe Condita · 9 BC
★ 2.0
Treatise

I would earnestly ask my sisters to keep clear of both the jargons now current everywhere... Of the jargon, namely about the "rights" of women, which urges women to do all that men do... Merely because men do it, and without regard to whether this is the best that women can do; and of the jargon which urges women to do nothing that men do, merely because they are women... Woman should bring the best she has, whatever that is... Without attending to either of these cries.

★ 3.6
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