Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Quotes & Sayings

If grief kills us not, we kill it. Not that I cease to grieve; for each hour, revealing to me how excelling and matchless the being was, who once was mine, but renews the pang with which I deplore my alien state upon earth. But such is God's will; I am doomed to a divided existence, and I submit. Meanwhile I am human; and human affections are the native, luxuriant growth of a heart, whose weakness it is, too eagerly, and too fondly, to seek objects on whom to expend its yearning. — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Surely once in a life God will grant the earnest entreaty of a loving heart. — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

It is thus that man, with fervent imagination, can endue the rough stone with loveliness, forge the mis-shapen metal into a likeness of all that wins our hearts by exceeding beauty, and breathe into a dissonant trump soul-melting harmonies. The mind of man - that mystery, which may lend arms against itself, teaching vain lessons of material philosophy, but which, in the very act, shows its power to play with all created things, adding the sweetness of its own essence to the sweetest, taking its ugliness from the deformed. — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

A solitary being is by instinct a wanderer ... — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Richard, marked for misery and defeat, acknowledged that power which sentiment possesses to exalt us - to convince us that our minds, endowed with a soaring, restless aspiration, can find no repose on earth except in love. — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Spring advanced rapidly; the weather became fine, and the skies cloudless. It surprised me that what before was desert and gloomy should now bloom with the most beautiful flowers and verdure. My senses were gratified and refreshed by a thousand scents of delight, and a thousand sights of beauty. — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

All men hate the wretched. — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

No, no, I will not live among the wild scenes of nature, the enemy of all that lives. I will seek the towns - Rome, the capital of the world, the crown of man's achievements. Among its storied streets, hallowed ruins, and stupendous remains of human exertion, I shall not, as here, find every thing forgetful of man; trampling on his memory, defacing his works, proclaiming from hill to hill, and vale to vale, - by the torrents freed from the boundaries which he imposed - by the vegetation liberated from the laws which he enforced - by his habitation abandoned to mildew and weeds, that his power is lost, his race annihilated for ever. — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

as she bestowed her heavy censure alike on his virtues as his errors, on his devoted friendship and his ill-bestowed loves, on his disinterestedness and his prodigality, on his pre-possessing grace of manner, and the facility with which he yielded to temptation, her double shot proved too heavy, and fell short of the mark. Nor — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

His wild and enthusiastic imagination was chastened by the sensibility of his heart. His soul overflowed with ardent affections, and his friendship was of that devoted and wondrous nature that the worldly-minded teach us to look for only in the imagination. But even human sympathies were not sufficient to satisfy his eager mind. The scenery of external nature, which others regard only with admiration, he loved with ardour[...] — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

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

avoided explanation, and maintained a continual silence concerning the wretch I had created. I had a feeling that I should be supposed mad, and this for ever chained my tongue, when I would have given the whole world to have confided the fatal secret. — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

We have one unerring guide...Call it love, charity, or sympathy; it is the best, the angelic portion of us. It teaches us to feel pain at others pain, joy in their joy. The more entirely we mingle our emotions with those of others, making our well or ill being depend on theirs, the more completely do we cast away our selfishness, and approach the perfection of our nature. — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

the master of this person of an excellent disposition. And is remarkable in the ship for his gentleness,and the mildness of his disipline... added to his well known integrity and dauntless courage, made me desirious to engage him. — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

When tenderness softened her heart, and the sublime feeling of universal love penetrated her, she found no voice that replied so well to hers as the gentle singing of the pines under the air of noon, and the soft murmurs of the breeze that scattered her hair and freshened her cheek, and the dashing of the waters that has no beginning or end. — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

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

What is the world, except that which we feel? Love, and hope, and delight, or sorrow and tears; these are our lives, our realities, to which we give the names of power, possession, misfortune, and death. — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

He is eloquent and persuasive; and once his words had even power over my heart: but trust him not. His soul is as hellish as his form, full of treachery and fiend-like malice. Hear him not; call — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Sorrow only increased with knowledge. — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

The air of fashion, which many young people are so eager to attain, always strikes me like the studied attitudes of some modern prints, copied with tasteless servility after the antigue; the soul is left out, and none of the parts are tied together by what may properly be termed character. — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

I was like the Arabian who had been buried with the dead, and found a passage to life aided only by one glimmering, and seemingly ineffectual, light. I — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

I will be cool, persevering, and prudent. — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

I must love and be loved. I must feel that my dear and chosen friends are happier through me. When I have wandered out of myself in my endeavour to shed pleasure around, I must again return laden with the gathered sweets on which I feed and live. Permit this to be, unblamed - permit a heart whose sufferings have been, and are, so many and so bitter, to reap what joy it can from the necessity it feels to be sympathized with - to love. — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Shall I not then hate them who abhor me? — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

To be a great and virtuous man appeared the highest honour that can befall a sensitive being; to be base and vicious, as many on record have been, appeared the lowest degradation, a condition more abject than that of the blind mole or harmless worm. — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

i'm a creature of fine sensations — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

About half an hour afterwards he attempted again to speak, but was unable; he pressed my hand feebly, and his eyes closed for ever, while the irradiation of a gentle smile passed away from his lips. — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

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. — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Who was I? What was I? Whence did I come? — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

One wondering thought pollutes the day — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

You will rejoice to hear that no disaster has accompanied the commencement of an enterprise which you have regarded with such evil forebodings. — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

I have longed for a friend; I have sought one who would sympathize with and love me. — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Invention consists in the capacity of seizing on the capabilities of a subject, and in the power of moulding and fashioning ideas suggested to it, — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

The modern masters promise very little — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Our faults are apt to assume giant and exaggerated forms to our eyes in youth. — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

His conversation was marked by its happy abundance. — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

...misery had her dwelling in my heart... — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

From my infancy I was imbued with high hopes and a lofty ambition. — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

what a strange nature is knowledge! It clings to the mind when it has once seized on it like a lichen on the rock. — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

There, Margaret, the sun is forever visible, its broad disk just skirting the horizon and diffusing a perpetual splendour. There - for with your leave, — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

For the first time she knew and loved the Spirit of good and beauty, an affinity to which affords the greatest bliss that our nature can receive. — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Everything must have a beginning ... and that beginning must be linked to something that went before. — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Tranquility, allied to loneliness, possessed no charms. — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Be a man, or be more than a man. — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Youth, elastic and bright, disdains to be compelled. When conquered, from its very chains it forges implements for freedom; it alights from one baffled flight, only again to soar on untired wing towards some other aim. Previous defeat is made the bridge to pass the tide to another shore; and, if that break down, its fragments become stepping stones. It will feed upon despair, and call it a medicine which is to renovate its dying hopes. — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

To examine the causes of life, we must first have recourse to death. — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

What are we, the inhabitants of this globe, least among the many that people infinite space? Our minds embrace infinity; the visible mechanism of our being is subject to merest accident. — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Truly disappointment is the guardian deity of human life; she sits at the threshold of unborn time, and marshals the events as they come forth. — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Once a king ... it was impossible, without risk of life, to sink to a private station. — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Whence, I often asked myself, did the principle of life proceed? — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

She saw and marked the revolutions that had been, and the present seemed to her only a point of rest, from which time was to renew his flight. — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Standing armies can never consist of resolute robust men; they may be well-disciplined machines, but they will seldom contain men under the influence of strong passions, or with very vigorous faculties. — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

And the violet lay dead while the odour flew On the wings of the wind o'er the waters blue. — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

You have not studied the histories of ancient times, and perhaps know not the life that breathes in them; a soul of beauty and wisdom which had penetrated my heart of hearts. — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Evil thenceforth became my good. — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

There is something so different in Venice from any other place in the world, that you leave at once all accustomed habits and everyday sights to enter an enchanted garden. — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Here then I retreated, and lay down, happy to have found a shelter, however miserable, from the inclemency of the season, and still more from the barbarity of man. — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

If I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear! — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

I was seized by remorse and the sense of guilt, which hurried me away to a hell of intense tortures as no language can describe — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

We look back to times past, and we mass them together, and say in such a year such and such events took place, such wars occupied that year, and during the next there was peace. Yet each year was then divided into weeks, days, minute, and slow-moving seconds, during which there were human minds to note and distinguish them, as now. — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Destiny was too potent, and her immutable laws had decreed my utter and terrible destruction. — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

(...) but, oh! the weight of never-ending time - the tedious passage of the still-succeeding hours! — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Those moral laws on which all human excellence is founded - a love of truth in ourselves, and a sincere sympathy with our fellow-creatures. — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

I do not fear to die, that pang is past. God raises my weakness, and gives me courage to endure the worst. 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. Learn from me, dear lady, to submit in patience to the will of Heaven!"~~Justine Moritz — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Ennui, the demon, waited at the threshold of his noiseless refuge, and drove away the stirring hopes and enlivening expectations, which form the better part of life. — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

We are fashioned creatures, but half made up. — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

I clung to my ferocious habits, yet half despised them; I continued my war against civilization, and yet entertained a wish to belong to it. — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

I wish to soothe him; yet can I counsel one so infinitely miserable, so destitute of every hope of consolation, to live? — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

I, the miserable and the abandoned, am an abortion, to be spurned at, and kicked, and trampled on — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Suddenly high song awakens me, and I leave all this tedious routine far, far distant; I listen, till all the world is changed, and the beautiful earth becomes more beautiful. — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

which I hoped to make. None but those who have experienced them can conceive of the enticements of science. In other studies you go as far as others have gone before you, and there is nothing more to know; but in a scientific pursuit there is continual food for discovery and wonder. A mind of moderate capacity which closely pursues one study must infallibly arrive at great proficiency in that study; and — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Poetry, and the principle of Self, of which money is the visible incarnation, are the God and the Mammon of the world. — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

You hate me; but your abhorrence cannot equal that with which I regard myself. — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

A lofty sense of independence is, in man, the best privilege of his nature. — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

My internal being was in a state of insurrection and turmoil; I felt that order would thence arise, but I had no power to produce it. By — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

His conversation was full of imagination, and very often in limitation of ther Persian, and Arabic writers, he invented tales of wonderful fancy and passion. At other times he repeated my fsvorite poems or drew me out into arguments, wich he suported with great ingenuity. — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

And I call on you, spirits of the dead, and on you, wandering ministers of vengeance, to aid and conduct me in my work. Let — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

The sentiment of immediate loss in some sort decayed, while that of utter, irremediable loneliness grew on me with time. — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

I considered the being whom I had cast among mankind and endowed with the will and power to effect purposes of horror, such as the deed which he had now done, nearly in the light of my own vampire, my own spirit let loose from the grave and forced to destroy all that was dear to me. — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

The sun might shine or the clouds might lower, but nothing could appear to me as it had done the day before. — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Am I to be thought the only criminal, when all humankind sinned against me? — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

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 Wollstonecraft Shelley

...I was a shattered wreck,--the shadow of a human being. — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Marriage is usually considered the grave, and not the cradle of love. — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

There is a love for the marvellous, a belief in the marvellous, interwined in all my projects, which hurries me out of the common pathways of men. — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Oh, had I, weak and faint of speech, words to teach my fellow-creatures the beauty and capabilities of man's mind; could I, or could one more fortunate, breathe the magic word which would reveal to all the power, which we all possess, to turn evil to good, foul to fair; then vice and pain would desert the new-born world!

It is not thus: the wise have taught, the good suffered for us; we are still the same; and still our own bitter experience and heart-breaking regrets teach us to sympathize too feelingly with a tale like this. — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

God blesses all things," she thought, "and he will also bless me. Much wrong have I done, but love pure and disinterested is in my heart, and I shall be repaid. — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

new species would bless me as its creator and source; many happy and excellent natures would owe their being to me. No father could claim the gratitude of his child so completely as I should deserve their's. — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Life has more in it than we think; it is all that we have, all that we know. — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

You have destroyed the work which you began; what is it that you intend? Do you dare to break your promise? I have endured toil and misery; I — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Anguish and despair had penetrated into the core of my heart; I bore a hell within me, which nothing could extinguish. — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

I had gazed on him while unfinished; he was ugly then; but when those muscles and joints were rendered capable of motion, it became a thing such as even Dante could not have conceived. I — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Ever since the fatal night, the end of my labours, and the beginning of my misfortunes, I had conceived a violent antipathy even to the name of natural philosophy. When I was otherwise quite restored to health, the sight of a chemical instrument would renew all the agony of my nervous symptoms. Henry saw this, and had removed all my apparatus from my view. — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

I said in one of my letters, my dear Margaret, that I should find no friend on the wide ocean; yet I have found a man who, before his spirit had been broken by misery, I should have been happy to have possessed as the brother of my heart. — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

The young are always in extremes. — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

I am malicious because I am miserable — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

You are my creator, but I am your master; Obey! — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

The careful rearer of the ductile human plant can instil his own religion, and surround the soul by such a moral atmosphere, as shall become to its latest day the air it breathes. — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Yes," she thought, "nature is the refuge and home for women: they have no public career - no aim nor end beyond their domestic circle; but they can extend that, and make all the creations of nature their own, to foster and do good to. — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Our feelings probably are not less strong at fifty than they were ten or fifteen years before; but they have changed their objects, and dwell on far different prospects. At five-and-thirty a man thinks of what his own existence is; when the maturity of age has grown into its autumn, he is wrapt up in that of others. The loss of wife or child then becomes more deplorable, as being impossible to repair; for no fresh connection can give us back the companion of our earlier years, nor a "new-sprung race" compensate for that, whose career we hoped to see run. — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley