I clung to my ferocious habits, yet half despised them; I continued my war against civilization, and yet entertained a wish to belong to it. - Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

It is a melancholy truth; yet such is the blessed effect of civilization! the most respectable women are the most oppressed; and, unless they have understandings far superiour to the common run of understandings, taking in both sexes, they must, from being treated like contemptible beings, become contemptible.

Death! mysterious, ill-visaged friend of weak humanity! Why alone of all mortals have you cast me from your sheltering fold? Oh, for the peace of the grave! the deep silence of the iron-bound tomb! that thought would cease to work in my brain, and my heart beat no more with emotions varied only by new forms of sadness!

But now misery has come home, and men appear to me as monsters thirsting for each other's blood.