Top 167 Quotes & Sayings by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Thus strangely are our souls constructed, and by slight ligaments are we bound to prosperity and ruin.

My candle was nearly burnt out, when, by the glimmer of the half-extinguished light, I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open.

The young are always in extremes.

I am alone and miserable. Only someone as ugly as I am could love me.

It is true, we shall be monsters, cut off from all the world; but on that account we shall be more attached to one another.

There is love in me the likes of which you've never seen. There is rage in me the likes of which should never escape. If I am not satisfied int he one, I will indulge the other.

It is a strange feeling for a girl when first she finds the power put into her hand of influencing the destiny of another to happiness or misery. She is like a magician holding for the first time a fairy wand, not having yet had experience of its potency.

A solitary being is by instinct a wanderer.

I cherished hope, it is true, but it vanished when my person reflected . . .

Oh! Stars and clouds and winds, ye are all about to mock me; if ye really pity me, crush sensation and memory; let me become as nought; but if not, depart, depart, and leave me in darkness.

He was soon borne away by the waves and lost in darkness and distance.

A human being in perfection ought always to preserve a calm and peaceful mind and never to allow passion or a transitory desire to disturb his tranquility.

When falsehood can look so like the truth, who can assure themselves of certain happiness?

I also became a poet, and for one year lived in a Paradise of my own creation; I imagined that I also might obtain a niche in the temple where the names of Homer and Shakespeare are consecrated.

How dreadful it is, to emerge from the oblivion of slumber, and to receive as a good morrow the mute wailing of one's own hapless heart - to return from the land of deceptive dreams to the heavy knowledge of unchanged disaster!

It was the secrets of heaven and earth that I desired to learn; and whether it was the outward substance of things or the inner spirit of nature and the mysterious soul of man that occupied me, still my inquiries were directed to the metaphysical, or in its highest sense, the physical secrets of the world.

Curiosity, earnest research to learn the hidden laws of nature, gladness akin to rapture, as they unfolded to me, are among the earliest sensations I can remember.

I do know that for the sympathy of one living being, I would make peace with all. I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine and rage the likes of which you would not believe. If I cannot satisfy the one, I will indulge the other.

You are my creator, but I am your master; Obey!

Men become cannibals of their own hearts; remorse, regret, and restless impatience usurp the place of more wholesome feeling: every thing seems better than that which is.

Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change. The sun might shine, or the clouds might lour: but nothing could appear to me as it had done the day before.

In other studies you go as far as other have gone before you, and there is nothing more to know; but in a scientific pursuit there is continual food for discovery and wonder.

Solitude was my only consolation - deep, dark, deathlike solitude.

If I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear!

Happiness is in its highest degree the sister of goodness.

Live, and be happy, and make others so.

I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend. Make me happy, and I shall again be virtuous.

What can stop the determined heart and resolved will of man?

The instructor can scarcely give sensibility where it is essentially wanting, nor talent to the unpercipient block. But he can cultivate and direct the affections of the pupil, who puts forth, as a parasite, tendrils by which to cling, not knowing to what - to a supporter or a destroyer.

Even broken in spirit as he is, no one can feel more deeply than he does the beauties of nature. The starry sky, the sea, and every sight afforded by these wonderful regions, seems still to have the power of elevating his soul from earth. Such a man has a double existence: he may suffer misery, and be overwhelmed by disappointments; yet, when he has retired into himself, he will be like a celestial spirit that has a halo around him, within whose circle no grief or folly ventures.

Devil, do you dare approach me? and do you not fear the fierce vengeance of my arm wreaked on your miserable head?

...if I see but one smile on your lips when we meet, occasioned by this or any other exertion of mine, I shall need no other happiness.

The world was to me a secret which I desired to devine.

I could not understand why men who knew all about good and evil could hate and kill each other.

Accursed creator! Why did you form a monster so hideous that even you turned from me in disgust?

At the age of twenty six I am in the condition of an aged person - all my old friends are gone... & my heart fails when I think by how few ties I hold to the world.

To examine the causes of life, we must first have recourse to death.

My education was neglected, yet I was passionately fond of reading.

Evil thenceforth became my good.

With how many things are we on the brink of becoming acquainted, if cowardice or carelessness did not restrain our inquiries.

I collected the instruments of life around me, that I might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet. It was already one in the morning; the rain pattered dismally against the panes, and my candle was nearly burnt out, when, by the glimmer of the half-extinguished light, I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open; it breathed hard, and a convulsive motion agitated its limbs.

Look forward to future years, if not with eager anticipation, yet with a calm reliance upon the power of good, wholly remote from despair.

It would be an endless task to trace the variety of meannesses, cares, and sorrows into which women are plunged by the prevailing opinion that they were created rather to feel than reason.

Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change.

There is something at work in my soul, which I do not understand.

The fallen angel becomes a malignant devil.

A truce to philosophy!—Life is before me, and I rush into possession. Hope, glory, love, and blameless ambition are my guides, and my soul knows no dread. What has been, though sweet, is gone; the present is good only because it is about to change, and the to come is all my own.

But soon, I shall die, and what I now feel be no longer felt. Soon these burning miseries will be extinct.

Of what a strange nature is knowledge! It clings to a mind when it has once seized on it like a lichen on a rock." - Frankenstein p115

...learn from my miseries, and do not seek to increase your own.

Solitude becomes a sort of tangible enemy, the more dangerous, because it dwells within the citadel itself.

I shall commit my thoughts to paper, it is true; but that is a poor medium for the communication of feeling. I desire the company of a man who could sympathize with me, whose eyes would reply to mine.

Her countenance was all expression; her eyes were not dark but impenetrably deep; you seemed to discover space after space in their intellectual glance.

marriage is usually considered the grave, and not the cradle of love.

The moon gazed on my midnight labours, while, with unrelaxed and breathless eagerness, I pursued nature to her hiding places.

Beware; for I am fearless, and therefore powerful.

. . . the companions of our childhood always possess a certain power over our minds which hardly any later friend can obtain.

I feel exquisite pleasure in dwelling on the recollections of childhood, before misfortune had tainted my mind, and changed its bright visions of extensive usefulness into gloomy and narrow reflections upon self.

Nothing is more painful to the human mind than, after the feelings have been worked up by a quick succession of events, the dead calmness of inaction and certainty which follows and deprives the soul both of hope and fear.

...once I falsely hoped to meet the beings who, pardoning my outward form, would love me for the excellent qualities which I was capable of unfolding.