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Mary Shelley Quotes

Total quotes (43)

Mary Shelley

Mary Shelley

Birthname

AKA Mary Shelley

Birthday August 30, 1797

Death February 1, 1851

Manner of Death Natural Causes

Nationality Kingdom Of Great Britain

Occupations Essayist, Science Fiction Writer, Playwright, Travel Writer, Novelist

Spouse Percy Bysshe Shelley

Total quotes (43)

We will be monsters, alone in the world, but we will have each other

— Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

True Love Stay By Each Other's Side

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

— Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

Pain Human Mind Change

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

— Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

Famous Last Lines Darkness

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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

romance Unimaginable Desire Odd Liking

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And now I began to live. All around me was changed from a dull uniformity to the brightest scene of joy and delight.

— Mary Shelley, via www.online-literature.com

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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

Knowledge Happiness Native aspiration Desire Greatness

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My greatest pleasure was the enjoyment of a serene sky amidst these verdant woods: yet I loved all the changes of Nature; and rain, and storm, and the beautiful clouds of heaven brought their delights with them.

— Mary Shelley, Matilda

Pleasure Enjoyment Nature Sky Rain Clouds Heaven

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Life, although it may only be an accumulation of anguish, is dear to me, and I will defend it.

— Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

Life Despair anguish

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

— Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

Virtue Misery Happiness

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But I am a blasted tree; the bolt has entered my soul; and I felt then that I should survive to exhibit what I shall soon cease to be - a miserable spectacle of wrecked humanity, pitiable to others and intolerable to myself.

— Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

Miserable humanity Soul Tree

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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, Frankenstein

Dreams Refuge Freedom

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It was now the end of May; the woods were clothed in their freshest verdure, and the sweet smell of the new mown grass was in the fields.

— Mary Shelley, Mathilda

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I feel my heart glow with an enthusiasm which elevates me to heaven, for nothing contributes so much to tranquillize the mind as a steady purpose — a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye.

— Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

heart Glow Enthusiasm purpose Soul

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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.

— Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

monsters Attachment

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

— Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

Friendship Companion Childhood

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But my pleasures arose from the contemplation of nature alone, I had no companion: my warm affections finding no return from any other human heart were forced to run waste on inanimate objects.

— Mary Shelley, Mathilda

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He loved her with passion and her tenderness had a charm for him that would not permit him to think of aught but her.

— Mary Shelley, Mathilda

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One thing I will add: if I have ever found kindness, it has not been from Liberals; to disengage myself from them was the first act of my freedom.

— Mary Shelley, The Life & Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

kindness Liberal Freedom

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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, Two Works by Mary Shelley

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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....

— Mary Shelley, The Journals of Mary Shelley

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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.

— Mary Shelley, Delphi Complete Works of Mary Shelley (Illustrated)

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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, Frankenstein

Love sympathy Misery Hatred Change

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

— Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

Weeping Nature Comfort

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Life is before me and I rush into possession. Hope, glory, love, and blameless ambition are my guides, and my soul knows no dread.

— Mary Shelley, The Last Man

Hope Love Ambition

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Live, and be happy, and make others so.

— Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

live Be Happy Happiness People Making Change Making People Happy Happy Life Living Life Making A Difference Inspirational Motivational

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

— Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

Solitude Deep dark

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The beginning is always today.

— Mary Shelley, via www.amazon.com

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Beware; for I am fearless, and therefore powerful.

— Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

Selfie Captions Beware Fearless Power strength

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The name of Italy has magic in its very syllables.

— Mary Shelley, Rambles in Germany and Italy, in 1840, 1842, and 1843 by Mary Shelley - Delphi Classics (Illustrated)

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It is only four o'clock; but it is winter and the sun has already set: there are no clouds in the clear, frosty sky to reflect its slant beams, but the air itself is tinged with a slight roseate colour which is again reflected on the snow that covers the ground.

— Mary Shelley, Mathilda

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But my father; my beloved and most wretched father? Would he die? Would he never overcome the fierce passion that now held pitiless dominion over him? Might he not many, many years hence, when age had quenched the burning sensations that he now experienced, might he not then be again a father to me?

— Mary Shelley, Mathilda

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It may...be judged indecent in me to come forward on this occasion; but when I see a fellow-creature about to perish through the cowardice of her pretended friends, I wish to be allowed to speak, that I may say what I know of her character.

— Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

Two-Faced Fake Friends Pretend Friends Cowardice character

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O, hours of intense delight! Short as ye were ye are made as long to me as a whole life when looked back upon through the mist of grief that rose immediately after as if to shut ye from my view. Alas! ye were the last of happiness that I ever enjoyed; a few, a very few weeks and all was destroyed.

— Mary Shelley, Mathilda

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No one can conceive the variety of feelings which bore me onwards, like a hurricane, in the first enthusiasm of success. 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, Frankenstein

Feelings Success Life Death

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

— Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

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I do not wish women to have power over men; but over themselves.

— Mary Shelley, via www.amazon.com

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Happiness is in its highest degree the sister of goodness. Suffering and amiability may exist together, and writers have loved to depict their conjunction; there is a human and touching harmony in the picture. But perfect happiness is an attribute of angels; and those who possess it, appear angelic.

— Mary Shelley, The Last Man

Happiness Suffering Angels

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I shall die, and what I now feel be no longer felt. Soon these burning miseries will be extinct. I shall ascend my funeral pile triumphantly and exult in the agony of the torturing flames. The light of that conflagration will fade away; my ashes will be swept into the sea by the winds. My spirit will sleep in peace, or if it thinks, it will not surely think thus. Farewell.

— Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

Death departure funeral Spirit Peace

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I seek not a fellow feeling in my misery. No sympathy may I ever find. When I first sought it, it was the love of virtue, the feelings of happiness and affection with which my whole being overflowed, that I wished to be participated. But now that virtue has become to me a shadow, and that happiness and affection are turned into bitter and loathing despair, in what should I seek for sympathy?

— Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

Misery Despair Depression Bitterness Loathing

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She was a singular being, and, like me, inherited much of the peculiar disposition of our father. Her countenance was all expression; her eyes were not dark, but impenetrably deep; you seemed to discover space after space in their intellectual glance, and to feel that the soul which was their soul, comprehended an universe of thought in its ken.

— Mary Shelley, The Last Man

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I long to grapple with danger, to be excited by fear, to have some task, however slight or voluntary, for each day's fulfilment. I shall witness all the variety of appearance, that the elements can assume — I shall read fair augury in the rainbow — menace in the cloud — some lesson or record dear to my heart in everything. Thus around the shores of deserted earth, while the sun is high, and the moon waxes or wanes, angels, the spirits of the dead, and the ever-open eye of the Supreme, will behold the tiny bark, freighted with Verney — the LAST MAN.

— Mary Shelley, The Last Man

danger Excitement

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These may be termed Utopian dreams. – Thanks to that Being who impressed them on my soul, and gave me sufficient strength of mind to dare to exert my own reason, till, becoming dependent only on him for the support of my virtue, I view, with indignation, the mistaken notions that enslave my sex.

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. In fact, the conduct of an accountable being must be regulated by the operations of its own reason; or on what foundation rests the throne of God?

— Mary Shelley, A vindication of the rights of woman: with strictures on political and moral subjects

feminism Submission God

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I found if sorrow was dead within me, so was love and desire of sympathy. Yet sorrow only slept to revive more fierce, but love never woke again--its ghost, ever hovering over my father's grave, alone survived--since his death all the world was to me a blank except where woe had stampt its burning words telling me to smile no more—the living were not fit companions for me, and I was ever meditating by what means I might shake them all off, and never be heard of again.

— Mary Shelley, Mathilda

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