9 quotes
Every human being grows up inside a sheath of custom, which enfolds it as the swathing clothes enfold the infant.
To keep a man (slave or servant) for your own advantage merely, to keep an animal that you may eat it, is a lie. You cannot look that man or animal in the face.
England's Ideal and Other Papers on Social Subjects (1887)
The money-grubber has been floating with the great current of society, while the poor man has been swimming against it.
Defence of Criminals: A Criticism of Morality (1889)
There is no solution except the freedom of woman—which means of course also the freedom of the masses of the people, men and women, and the ceasing altogether of economic slavery.
Love's Coming of Age (1896)
The law is in a sense the consolidated public opinion of society.
Defence of Criminals: A Criticism of Morality (1889)
Let every woman whose heart bleeds for the sufferings of her sex, hasten to declare herself and to constitute herself, as far as she possibly can, a free woman.
Love's Coming of Age (1896)
When the ideal of Society is material gain or possession, as it is largely today, the object of its special condemnation is the thief – not the rich thief, for he is already in possession and therefore respectable, but the poor thief.
Defence of Criminals – Criticism of Immorality (1889)
Granting, I say that competition has hitherto been the universal law, the last word, of nature, still if only one man should stand up and say, "It shall be so no more," if he should say, "It is not the last word of my nature, and my acts and life declare that it is not," then that so-called law would be at an end.
England's Ideal: And Other Papers on Social Subjects (1887)
The man who attempted to retain for himself land or goods, or who fenced off a portion of the common ground and—like the modern landlord—would allow no one to till it who did not pay him a tax—was a criminal of the deepest dye. Nevertheless the criminals pushed their way to the front, and have become the respectables of modern society.
Defence of Criminals: A Criticism of Morality (1889)