“To plead for the Oppress'd and to defend the Weak seem'd to me a generous undert…” — Mary Astell

Women need not take up with mean things, since (if they are not wanting to themselves) they are capable of the best.

Women are from their very infancy debarred those Advantages with the want of which they are afterwards reproached.

We all agree that its fit to be as Happy as we can, and we need no Instructor to teach us this Knowledge, 'tis born with us, and is inseparable from our Being, but we very much need to be Inform'd what is the true Way to Happiness.

The design of Rhetoric is to remove those Prejudices that lie in the way of Truth, to Reduce the Passions to the Government of Reasons; to place our Subject in a Right Light, and excite our Hearers to a due consideration of it.