Mary Shelley Quotes

Seek happiness in tranquility and avoid ambition even if it be only the apparently innocent one of distinguishing yourself in science and discoveries.

I became the same happy creature who, a few years ago, loved and beloved by all, had no sorrow or care.

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

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.

The raising of ghosts or devils was a promise liberally accorded by my favourite authors,

A mind of moderate capacity which closely pursues one study must infallibly arrive at great proficiency in that study.

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

Who could be interested in the fate of a murderer, but the hangman who would gain his fee?

How mutable are our feelings, and how strange is that clinging love we have of life even in the excess of misery!

Ah! it is well for the unfortunate to be resigned, but for the guilty there is no peace.

Enter the house of mourning, my friend, but with kindness and affection for those who love you, and not with hatred for your enemies.

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

Satan has his companions, fellow-devils, to admire and encourage him; but I am solitary and detested.

My courage and my resolution is firm; but my hopes fluctuate, and my spirits are often depressed.

I feel a cold northern breeze play upon my cheeks, which braces my nerves and fills me with delight.

Excellent friend! how sincerely did you love me, and endeavour to elevate my mind until it was on a level with your own.

Elegance is inferior to virtue.

He seems to feel his own worth, and the greatness of his fall.

The agony of my feelings allowed me no respite; no incident occurred from which my rage and misery could not extract its food.

It is decided as you may have expected; all judges had rather that ten innocent should suffer, than that one guilty should escape.

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.

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

Nothing contributes so much to tranquilize the mind as a steady purpose

You accuse me of murder; and yet you would, with a satisfied conscience, destroy your own creature. Oh, Praise the eternal justice of man!

Teach him to think for himself? Oh, my God, teach him rather to think like other people!

Natural philosophy is the genius that has regulated my fate.

Firm; but my hopes fluctuate, and my spirits are often

A slavish bondage to parents cramps every faculty of the mind.

I became myself capable of bestowing animation upon lifeless matter.

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.

I spread the whole earth out as a map before me. On no one spot of its surface could I put my finger and say, here is safety.

For nothing contributes so much to tranquillize the mind as a steady purpose - a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye.

I felt that blank incapability of invention which is the greatest misery of authorship, when dull Nothing replies to our anxious invocations.

I am not a person of opinions because I feel the counter arguments too strongly.

Her health, and even the tranquillity of her hitherto constant spirit, had been shaken by what she had gone through.

I heard of the discovery of the American hemisphere, and wept with Safie over the hapless fate of its original inhabitants.

A man would make but a very sorry chemist if he attended to that department of human knowledge alone.

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

I read of men concerned in public affairs governing or massacring their species.

I beheld the wretch-the miserable monster whom I had created.

I am satisfied: miserable wretch! you have determined to live, and I am satisfied.

Remember , that I am thy creature; I ought to be thy Adam; but I am rather the fallen angel, whom thou drivest from joy for no misdeed.

His landlady came to the door, loosely wrapped in dressing gown and shawl; her husband followed ejaculating.

So much does suffering blunt even the coarsest sensations of men

What terrified me will terrify others; and I need only describe the spectre which had haunted my midnight pillow.

Strange and harrowing must be his story; frightful the storm which embraced the gallant vessel on its course, and wrecked it
thus!

I trembled, and my heart failed within me; when, on looking up, I saw, by the light of the moon, the daemon at the casement.

You may deem me romantic, my dear sister, but I bitterly feel the want of a friend.

The very winds whispered in soothing accents, and maternal Nature bade me weep no more.

Listen to me, Frankenstein. You accuse me of murder, and yet you would, with a satisfied conscience, destroy your own creature.

But now misery has come home, and men appear to me as monsters thirsting for each other's blood.

The agonies of remorse poison the luxury there is otherwise sometimes found in the excess of grief.

Man," I cried, "how ignorant art thou in thy pride of wisdom!

What a glorious creature must he have been in the day of his prosperity, when he is thus noble and godlike in ruin.

Then reflected, and the thought made me shiver, that the creature whom I had left in my apartment might still be there, alive, and walking about.

When happy, inanimate nature had the power of bestowing on me the most delightful sensations.

I have thus endeavoured to preserve the truth of the elementary principles of human

Shore of the lake, at the distance of rather more than a league

I persuaded myself that I was dreaming until night should come and that I should then enjoy reality in the arms of my dearest friends.

The labours of men of genius, however erroneously directed, scarcely ever fail in ultimately turning to the solid advantage of mankind.

He may be innocent of the murder, but he has certainly a bad conscience.

I became the victim of ingratitude and cold coquetry - then I desponded, and imagined that my discontent gave me a right to hate the world. I

When you speak of new ties and fresh affections, think you that any can replace those who are gone?

I no longer see the world and its works as they before appeared to me.

I remembered Adam's supplication to his Creator. But where was mine? He had abandoned me, and in the bitterness of my heart I cursed him.

She seemed, poor woman, to imagine that the French and the Martians might prove very similar.

I, a miserable wretch, haunted by a curse that shut up every avenue to enjoyment.

I cannot tell you how I loathe talking about myself.

My own mind began to grow, watchful with anxoius thoughts.

The fallen angel becomes a malignant devil. Yet even that enemy of God and man had friends and associates in his desolation; I am alone.

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

What is there in our nature that is for ever urging us on towards pain and misery?

My spirit will sleep in peace; or if it thinks, it will not surely think thus. Farewell.

But now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart

Henry deeply felt the misfortune of being debarred from a liberal education.

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

Cursed, cursed creator! Why did I live? Why, in that instant, did I not extinguish the spark of existence which you had so wantonly bestowed?

I leave a sad and bitter world; and if you remember me, and think of me as of one unjustly condemned, I am resigned to the fate awaiting me.

He is dead who called me into being, and when I shall be no more the very remembrance of us both will speedily vanish.

It is well. I go; but remember, I shall be with you on your wedding-night.

I seemed to have lost all soul or sensation but for this one pursuit.

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

Yet you, my creator, detest and spurn me, thy creature, to whom thou art bound by ties only dissoluble by the annhilation of one of us.

This advice, although good, was totally inapplicable to my case.

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

Life is obstinate and clings closest where it is most hated.

You, my creator, abhor me; what hope can I gather from your fellow-creatures, who owe me nothing?

What did this mean? Who was I? What was I? Whence did I come? What was my destination?

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

Sir Isaac Newton is said to have avowed that he felt like a child picking up shells beside the great and unexplored ocean of truth.

We cannot without depraving our minds endeavour to please a lover or husband but in proportion as he pleases us.

The blood flowed freely in my veins, but a weight of despair and remorse pressed on my heart, which nothing could remove.

After so much time spent in painful labor, to arrive at once at the summit of my desires was the most gratifying consummation of my toils.

No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks.

Will revenge my injuries; if I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear, and chiefly towards you my arch-enemy, because my creator, do I swear

Why does man boast of sensibilities superior to those apparent in the brute; it only renders them more necessary beings.

Ignominious grave, and I the cause! A thousand times

It is with considerable difficulty that I remember the original era of my being ...

Nothing is so precious to a woman's heart as the glory and excellence of him she loves

It is a farce to call any being virtuous whose virtues do not result from the exercise of its own reason.