Mary Shelley > Quotes

“Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

“No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks.”
― Mary Shelley

“Beware; for I am fearless, and therefore powerful.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

“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.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

“The beginning is always today.”
― Mary Shelley

“If I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear!”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

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

“Life, although it may only be an accumulation of anguish, is dear to me, and I will defend it.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

“Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void but out of chaos.”
― Mary Shelley

“Solitude was my only consolation - deep, dark, deathlike solitude.”
― Mary Shelley

“How dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world, than he who aspires to be greater than his nature will allow.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

“The whole series of my life appeared to me as a dream; I sometimes doubted if indeed it were all true, for it never presented itself to my mind with the force of reality.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

“...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.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

“The world to me was a secret, which I desired to discover; to her it was a vacancy, which she sought to people with imaginations of her own.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

“...learn from my miseries, and do not seek to increase your own.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

“The fallen angel becomes a malignant devil.”
― Mary Shelley

“With how many things are we on the brink of becoming acquainted, if cowardice or carelessness did not restrain our inquiries.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

“My dreams were all my own; I accounted for them to nobody; they were my refuge when annoyed - my dearest pleasure when free.”
― Mary Shelley

“When falsehood can look so like the truth, who can assure themselves of certain happiness?”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

“I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel...”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

“...nothing contributes so much to tranquilize the mind as a steady purpose...”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

“Thus strangely are our souls constructed, and by slight ligaments are we bound to prosperity and ruin.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

“Satan has his companions, fellow-devils, to admire and encourage him; but I am solitary and detested.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

“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.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

“Man," I cried, "how ignorant art thou in thy pride of wisdom!”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

“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.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

“My heart was fashioned to be susceptible of love and sympathy, and when wrenched by misery to vice and hatred, it did not endure the violence of the change without torture such as you cannot even imagine.”
― Mary Shelley

“If our impulses were confined to hunger, thirst, and desire, we might be nearly free; but now we are moved by every wind that blows and a chance word or scene that that word may convey to us.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

“The labours of men of genius, however erroneously directed, scarcely ever fail in ultimately turning to the solid advantage of mankind.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

“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.”
― Mary Shelley

“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. I do not think that the pursuit of knowledge is an exception to this rule. If the study to which you apply yourself has a tendency to weaken your affections and to destroy your taste for those simple pleasures in which no alloy can possibly mix, then that study is certainly unlawful, that is to say, not befitting the human mind. If this rule were always observed; if no man allowed any pursuit whatsoever to interfere with the tranquillity of his domestic affections, Greece had not been enslaved, Caesar would have spared his country, America would have been discovered more gradually, and the empires of Mexico and Peru had not been destroyed.”
― Mary Shelley

“How mutable are our feelings, and how strange is that clinging love we have of life even in the excess of misery!”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

“I see by your eagerness, and the wonder and hope which your eyes express, my friend, that you expect to be in formed of the secret with which I am acquainted. That cannot be.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

“My spirit will sleep in peace; or if it thinks, it will not surely think thus. Farewell.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein; Or, the Modern Prometheus

“I love man as my fellow; but his scepter, real, or usurped, extends not to me, unless the reason of an individual demands my homage; and even then the submission is to reason, and not to man.”
― Mary Shelley, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

“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.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

“Learn from me, if not by my precepts, at least by my example, how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge, and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be his world, than he who aspires to become greater than his nature will allow.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

“Farewell! I leave you, and in you the last of humankind whom these eyes will ever behold. Farewell, Frankenstein! If thou wert yet alive and yet cherished a desire of revenge against me, it would be better satiated in my life than in my destruction. But it was not so; thou didst seek my extinction, that I might not cause greater wretchedness; and if yet, in some mode unknown to me, thou hadst not ceased to think and feel, thou wouldst not desire against me a vengeance greater than that which I feel. Blasted as thou wert, my agony was still superior to thine, for the bitter sting of remorse will not cease to rankle in my wounds until death shall close them forever.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

“Be men, or be more than men. Be steady to your purposes and firm as a rock. This ice is not made of such stuff as your hearts may be; it is mutable and cannot withstand you if you say that it shall not.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

“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.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

“Hateful day when I received life!' I exclaimed in agony. 'Accursed creator! Why did you form a monster so hideous that even you turned from me in disgust? God, in pity, made man beautiful and alluring, after his own image; but my form is a filthy type of yours, more horrid even from the very resemlance. Satan had his companions, fellow-devils, to admire and encourage him; but I am solitary and abhorred.' - Frankenstein”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

“Her countenance was all expression; her eyes were not dark but impenetrably deep; you seemed to discover space after space in their intellectual glance.”
― Mary Shelley, The Last Man

“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”
― Mary Shelley

“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.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

“I beheld the wretch-the miserable monster whom I had created.”
― Mary Shelley

“She was no longer that happy creature who in earlier youth wandered with me on the banks of the lake and talked with ecstasy of our future prospects. The first of those sorrows which are sent to wean us from the earth had visited her, and its dimming influence quenched her dearest smiles.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

“We never do what we wish when we wish it, and when we desire a thing earnestly, and it does arrive, that or we are changed, so that we slide from the summit of our wishes and find ourselves where we were.”
― Mary Shelley

“Life and death appeared to me ideal bounds, which I should first break through, and pour a torrent of light into our dark world.”
― Mary Shelley

“In my joy I thrust my hand into the live embers, but quickly drew it out with a cry of pain. How strange, I thought that the same cause should produce such opposite effects.”
― Mary Shelley

“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.”
― Mary Shelley