Love Quote by Mary Astell

Astell skewers vanity with the cool precision of someone who’s watched self-regard masquerade as virtue for far too long. The target isn’t confidence; it’s the moral alchemy by which “endowments” (talents, status, education, beauty, piety) become a private shrine. When a person is “full of himself,” there’s no interior room left for conscience, attention, or other people. Her phrasing makes selfishness feel physically cramped: goodness requires an outward tilt, an ability to be moved by something beyond one’s own inventory of gifts.

The intent is diagnostic, almost clinical. Astell isn’t merely scolding pride; she’s arguing that vanity breaks the machinery of ethical life. If you’re constantly admiring your own qualities, you treat relationships as mirrors, not encounters. Compassion becomes performative, humility becomes a costume, and moral action is reduced to credit-collecting. “Good at heart” is doing heavy lifting here: she’s not talking about manners or reputation, but the inner orientation that generates real virtue.

Context sharpens the edge. Astell, one of the earliest English feminist thinkers, wrote in a culture that rewarded male self-importance and instructed women in self-erasure. Her use of “Man” reads both as generic and pointed: a society that trains men to equate worth with entitlement will reliably produce people “full” of themselves. The line quietly flips the hierarchy. The truly gifted, she implies, are those least impressed by their gifts.