Mary Shelley Quotes

“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 Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein

“There is something at work in my soul, which I do not understand.”
― Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein

“I looked upon the sea, it was to be my grave”
― Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein

“With an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, 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 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.”
― Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

“I feel my heart glow with an enthusiasm which elevates me to heaven, for nothing contributes so much to tranquilize the mind as a steady purpose - a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye.”
― Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

“More than anything, I began to hate women writers. Frances Burney, Jane Austen, Elizabeth Browning, Mary Shelley, George Eliot, Virginia Woolf. Bronte, Bronte, and Bronte. I began to resent Emily, Anne, and Charlotte—my old friends—with a terrifying passion. They were not only talented; they were brave, a trait I admired more than anything but couldn't seem to possess. The world that raised these women hadn't allowed them to write, yet they had spun fiery novels in spite of all the odds. Meanwhile, I was failing with all the odds tipped in my favor. Here I was, living out Virginia Woolf's wildest feminist fantasy. I was in a room of my own. The world was no longer saying, "Write? What's the good of your writing?" but was instead saying "Write if you choose; it makes no difference to me.”
― Catherine Lowell, The Madwoman Upstairs

“Maybe the real problem wasn’t that she had nothing to write about, but that she had too much. Maybe she wasn’t afraid of her finiteness after all, but rather Infinity and how it called her to begin somewhere, anywhere. To begin might be an acceptance that indeed she was some kind of creator, with tremendous powers.

It might mean taking people’s lives into her hands–her own life, her friends’, even her father’s or mother’s. And maybe she was afraid they would think she had animated a wandering Frankenstein no one wanted to hold.”
― L.L. Barkat, The Novelist

“Mary Wollstonecraft Shelly: That's not so ignorant after all. There are two monsters in my story, not one And one of them, the scientist, is indeed named Frankenstein.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“But in truth, neither the lonely meditations of the hermit nor the turmulos raptures of the reveller, are capable of satisfying man’s heart. From the one we gather unquiet speculation, from the other satiety. The mind flags beneath the weight of thought, and droops in thee heartless intercourse of those whose sole aim is amusement. There is no fruition in their vacant kindness, and sharp rocs lur beneath the smiling ripples of these shallow waters.”
― Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

“Oh! What a miserable night I passed! The cold stars shone in mockery, and the bare trees waved their branches above me; now and then the sweet voice of a bird burst forth amidst the universal stillness. All, save I, were at rest or in enjoyment; I, like the arch-fiend, bore a hell within me, and finding myself unsympathized with, wished to tear up the trees, spread havoc and destruction around me, and then to have sat down and enjoyed the ruin.”
― Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein

“Had Mary Shelley fretted so? Maybe yes, maybe no. She’d begun her classic work on a dare. Had culled a dream to bring it into being. But it was not lost on Laura that the story might be a prolonged exercise in Shelley’s personal terrors. The subtitle of the work was 'Prometheus Unbound,' and Laura wondered if Shelley herself was not Prometheus in the form of the wandering monster, who desperately sought love and acceptance but was ultimately driven to face an icy landscape that seemed almost fantastical—the way our own subconscious could be, white and frozen-slippery.”
― L.L. Barkat, The Novelist

“Perhaps it is belief more than truth that helps us survive.”
― P.J. Parker, Fire on the Water: A Companion to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

“The stuff of nightmares is not only relegated to unconscious thoughts upon a pillow, safely beneath an eiderdown.”
― P.J. Parker, Fire on the Water: A Companion to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

“I have created something and let it loose upon the world. Whether it was my right to do so or not, I cannot say. At times I am filled with love for my creation. At others I am filled with regret and horror. But it is done. It has been created.”
― P.J. Parker, Fire on the Water: A Companion to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

“I asked, it is true, for greater treasures than a little food or rest: I required kindness and sympathy; but I did not believe myself utterly unworthy of it”
― Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein

“¿ Era el hombre, efectivamente, tan poderoso, tan virtuoso y magnífico, y no obstante tan depravado y tan bajo? Unas veces parecía un mero vástago del principio del mal; otras,lo más noble y divino que cabe imaginar.”
― Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein

“Nada hay más doloroso para el espíritu humano, tras la excitación que provoca la rápida sucesión de los acontecimientos, como esa calma mortal de apatía y certidumbre que la sigue, y priva al alma de toda esperanza y temor.”
― Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein

“Mary, la hija, pasó la infancia viendo su nombre escrito sobre ua tumba. Una madre desconocida - que llevaba su mismo nombre- había muerto al darla a luz, y eso la llevó a cavilar la vida entera sobre los misterios del naiemiento, y sobre la asombrosa proximidad que hay entre la vida y la muerte. Se sentía parida por la tumba, una tumba ella misma, y su nombre y su epitafio tallados sobre una piedra gris la persiguieron en la luz y en la sombra.”
― William Ospina, El año del verano que nunca llegó

“Pero ¿Dónde estaban mis amigos y familiares? No había tenido un padre que cuidase de mi infancia, ni una madre que me bendijese con sus sonrisas y caricias; y si los tuve, toda mi vida pasada no era sino tiniebla, un ciego vacío que no distinguía nada. Desde el principio de mis recuerdos, había sido como era entonces en estatura y proporción. Hasta ahora, nunca había visto a un ser que se pareciese a mí ni pretendiese contacto alguno conmigo. ¿ Qué era yo? La pregunta me surgía una y otra vez, sólo para contestarla con gemidos”
― Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein

“Observando a mi alrededor y escuchando a mis vecinos jamás pude oír hablar de un ser semejante a mí. ¿Era, por lo tanto, un monstruo, una criatura de la que todos se alejarían con repugnancia y horror?”
― Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

“Aprecio la vida, aunque sólo sea una sucesión de angustias, y la defenderé.”
― Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein

“Science gives us the ability to pull back the skin of life
and reveal the truth of things. It allows us to understand
the mysteries of mountain-making and falling stars.

But knowledge isn't meant to be held as a weapon
in a battle to defy our fates and manipulate life over death.

Evil lodges too easily in men's hearts.
What will happen if they assume the power to create life?”
― Lita Judge, Mary's Monster: Love, Madness, and How Mary Shelley Created Frankenstein

“I was myself when young, but that wears out in a very short time.”
― Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein:

“If such lovely creatures were miserable, it was less strange that I, an imperfect and solitary being. should be wretched.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

“Remember that I have power; you believe yourself miserable, but I can make you so wretched that the light of day will be hateful to you. You are my creator, but I am your master--obey!”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

“I do not know,' said the man, 'what the custom of the English may be; but it is the custom of the Irish to hate villains.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

“My present situation was one in which all voluntary thought was swallowed up and lost.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

“Ah! it is well for the unfortunate to be resigned, but for the guilty there is no peace.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein