Shelley Mary Quotes & Sayings

Every where I see bliss, from which I alone am irrevocably excluded. — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

On being charged with the fact, the poor girl confirmed the suspicion in a grat measure by her extreme confusion of manner. — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

I shall quit your vessel on the ice-raft which brought me hither, and shall seek the most northern extremity of the globe; I shall collect my funeral pile, and consume to ashes this miserable frame, that its remains may afford no light to any curious and unhallowed wretch, who would create such another as I have been. I shall die. I shall no longer feel the agonies which now consume me, or be the prey of feelings unsatisfied, yet unquenched. He is dead who called me into being; and when I shall be no more, the very remembrance of us both will speedily vanish. I shall no longer see the sun or stars, or feel the winds play on my cheeks. Light, feeling, and sense, will pass away; and in this condition must I find my happiness. — Mary Shelley

You seek for knowledge and wisdom, as I once did; and I ardently hope that the gratification of your wishes may not be a serpent to sting you, as mine has been. - Victor Frankenstein. — Mary Shelley

I can offer you no consolation, my friend," said he; "your disaster is irreparable. What do you intend to do? — Mary Shelley

What is there so fearful as the expectation of evil tidings delayed? ... Misery is a more welcome visitant when she comes in her darkest guise and wraps us in perpetual black, for then the heart no longer sickens with disappointed hope.
- The Evil Eye — Mary Shelley

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

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

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

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

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

All men hate the wretched. — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

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 Shelley

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

Unhappy man! Do you share my maddness? Have you drunk also of the intoxicating draught? Hear me; let me reveal my tale, and you will dash the cup from your lips! — Mary Shelley

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

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

Sorrow only increased with knowledge. — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

So much does suffering blunt even the coarsest sensations of men — Mary Shelley

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 — Mary Shelley

As I read, however, I applied much personally to my own feelings and condition. I found myself similar, yet at the same time strangely unlike to the beings concerning whom I read, and to whose conversation I was a listener. I sympathized with, and partly understood them, but I was unformed in mind, I was dependent on none, and related to none ... and there was none to lament my annihilation ... what did this mean? Who was I? What was I? Whence did I come? What was my destination? These questions continually recurred, but I was unable to solve them. — Mary Shelley

Wells is teaching us to think. Burroughs and his lesser imitators are teaching us not to think. Of course, Burroughs is teaching us to wonder. The sense of wonder is in essence a religious state, blanketing out criticism. Wells was always a critic, even in his most wondrous and romantic tales.

And there, I believe, the two poles of modern fantasy stand defined. At one pole wait Wells and his honorable predecessors such as Swift; at the other, Burroughs and the commercial producers, such as Otis Adelbart Kline, and the weirdies, and horror merchants such as H.P. Lovecraft, and so all the way past Tolkien to today's non-stop fantasy worlders. Mary Shelley stands somewhere at the equator of this metaphor. — Brian W. Aldiss

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

It is hardly surprising that women concentrate on the way they look instead of what is in their minds since not much has been put in their minds to begin with. — Mary Shelley

The greatest feminists have also been the greatest lovers. I'm thinking not only of Mary Wollstonecraft and her daughter Mary Shelley, but of Anais Nin, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and of course Sappho. You cannot divide creative juices from human juices. And as long as juicy women are equated with bad women, we will err on the side of being bad. — Erica Jong

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

From my birth I have aspired like the eagle - but unlike the eagle, my wings have failed ... Congratulate me then that I have found a fitting scope for my powers. — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

For the first time, also, I felt what the duties of a creator toward his creature were, and that i ought to render him happy before I complained of his wickedness. — Mary Shelley

It is a strange feeling for a girl when first she finds the power put into her hand of influencing the destiny of another to happiness or misery. She is like a magician holding for the first time a fairy wand, not having yet had experience of its potency. — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

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? — Mary Shelley

I am alone and miserable. Only someone as ugly as I am could love me. — Mary Shelley

The stuff of nightmares is not only relegated to unconscious thoughts upon a pillow, safely beneath an eiderdown. — P.J. Parker

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

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

There was always scope for fear,so long as anything I love remained behind — Mary Shelley

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

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

One of the things in the Mary Shelley [Frankenstein] is that the creature tells his story, so this begins with the creature's point of view. So, it literally starts with the creature opening his eyes and is born - but is obviously in his 30s. But because they're the creator and the created we thought it would be really interesting if they could look at each other every other night and play each other's roles. — Danny Boyle

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

The instructor can scarcely give sensibility where it is essentially wanting, nor talent to the unpercipient block. But he can cultivate and direct the affections of the pupil, who puts forth, as a parasite, tendrils by which to cling, not knowing to what - to a supporter or a destroyer. — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

This was then the reward of my benevolence! I had saved a human being from destruction, and as a recompense I now writhed under the miserable pain of a wound which shattered the flesh and bone. The feelings of kindness and gentleness which I had entertained but a few moments before gave place to hellish rage and gnashing of teeth. Inflamed by pain, I vowed eternal hatred and vengeance to all mankind. But the agony of my wound overcame me; my pulses paused, and I fainted. — Mary 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

Justine shook her head mournfully. "I do not fear to die," she said; "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! — Mary Shelley

To be friendless is indeed to be unfortunate; but the hearts of men, when unprejudiced by any obvious self-interest, are full of brotherly love and charity. Rely, therefore, on your hopes. — Mary Shelley

And now, once again, I bid my hideous progeny go forth and prosper. I have an affection for it, for it was the offspring of happy days, when death and grief were but words, which found no true echo in my heart. — Mary Shelley

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

When you arrive in the afterlife, you find that Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley sits on a throne. She is cared for and protected by a covey of angels.
After some questioning, you find out that God's favorite book is Shelley's Frankenstein. He sits up at night with a worn copy of the book clutched in his mighty hands, alternately reading the book and staring reflectively at the night sky. — David Eagleman

Life is obstinate and clings closest where it is most hated. — Mary Shelley

I saw no cause for their unhappiness, but I was deeply affected by it. If such lovely creatures were miserable, it was less strange that I, an imperfect and solitary being, should be wretched. — Mary Shelley

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

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

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. When rocked by the waves of the lake my spirits rose in triumph as a horseman feels with pride the motions of his high fed steed.
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

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

My dreams were at once more fantastic and agreeable than my writings. — Mary Shelley

I cannot describe to you the agony that these reflections inflicted upon me: I tried to dispel them, but sorrow only increased with knowledge. Oh, that I had for ever remained in my native wood, nor known nor felt beyond the sensations of hunger, thirst, and heat!
Of what a strange nature is knowledge! It clings to the mind, when it has once seized on it, like a lichen on the rock. I wished sometimes to shake off all thought and feeling; but I learned that there was but one means to overcome the sensation of pain, and that was death. — Mary Shelley

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

In other studies you go as far as other have gone before you, and there is nothing more to know; but in a scientific pursuit there is continual food for discovery and wonder. — Mary Shelley

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. — Mary Shelley

They penetrate into the recesses of nature, and shew how she works in her hiding places. They ascend into the heavens; they have discovered how the blood circulates, and the nature of the air we breathe. They have acquired new and almost unlimited powers; they can command the thunders of heaven, mimic the earthquake, — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

He was soon borne away by the waves and lost in darkness and distance. — Mary Shelley

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

And I foresaw obscurely that I was destined to become the most wretched of human beings. — Mary Shelley

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

It was my temper to avoid a crowd, and to attach myself fervently to a few. — Mary Shelley

Do not despair. To be friendless is indeed to be unfortunate, but the hearts of men, when unprejudiced by any obvious self-interest, are full of brotherly love and charity. — Mary Shelley

Nico was gothic, but she was Mary Shelley gothic to everyone else's Hammer horror film gothic. They both did Frankenstein, but Nico's was real. — Peter Murphy

The haughty princess of Austria, who became, as queen of England, the head of fashion, looked with harsh eyes on his defects, and with contempt on the affection her royal husband entertained for him. — Mary Shelley

Volume II: Chapter 5
The God sends down his angry plagues from high,
Famine and pestilence in heaps they die.
Again in vengeance of his wrath he falls
On their great hosts, and breaks their tottering walls;
Arrests their navies on the ocean's plain,
And whelms their strength with mountains of the main. — Mary Shelley

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

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

I contempleted the lake; the waters were placid, all around was calm and the snowy mountains ... the calm and heavenly scene restored me and I continued my journey toward Geneva. — Mary 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

It is so long before the mind can persuade itself that she whom we saw every day and whose very existence appeared a part of our own can have departed forever - that the brightness of a beloved eye can have been extinguished and the sound of a voice so familiar and dear to the ear can be hushed, never more to be heard. — Mary Shelley

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

Even the eternal skies weep, I thought; is there any shame then, that mortal man should spend himself in tears? — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

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

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

The course of the Rhine below Mainz becomes much more picturesque. The river descends rapidly and winds between hills, not high, but steep, and of beautiful forms. We saw many ruined castles standing on the edges of precipices, surrounded by black woods, high and inaccessible. This part of the Rhine, indeed, presents a singularly variegated landscape. In one spot you view rugged hills, ruined castles overlooking tremendous precipices, with the dark Rhine rushing beneath; and on the sudden turn of a promontory, flourishing vineyards with green sloping banks and a meandering river and populous towns occupy the scene. — Mary Shelley

I required kindness and sympathy, but I did not believe myself utterly unworthy of it. — Mary Shelley

I did not make myself the heroine of my tales. Life appeared to me too common-place an affair as regarded myself. I could not figure to myself that romantic woes or wonderful events would ever by my lot; but I was not confided to my own identify, and I could people the hours with creations far more interesting to me at that age than my own sensations. — Mary Shelley

When one creature is murdered, another is immediately deprived of life in a slow torturing manner; then the executioners, their hands yet reeking with the blood of innocence, believe that they have done a great deed. — Mary Shelley

Poor William!" said he, "dear lovely child, he now sleeps with his angel mother! Who that had seen him bright and joyous in his young beauty, but must weep over his untimely loss! To die so miserably; to feel the murderer's grasp! How much more a murderer, that could destroy such radiant innocence! Poor little fellow! one only consolation have we; his friends mourn and weep, but he is at rest. The pang is over, his sufferings are at an end for ever. A sod covers his gentle form, and he knows no pain. He can no longer be a subject for pity; we must reserve that for his miserable survivors. — Mary Shelley

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

We know not what all this wide world means; its strange mixture of good and evil. But we have been placed here and bid live and hope. I know not what we are to hope; but there is some good beyond us that we must seek; and that is our earthly task. If — Mary 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

Alas! he is cold, he cannot answer me. — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

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 resemblance. Satan had his companions, fellow devils, to admire and encourage him, but I am solitary and abhorred. — Mary Shelley

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

He is an Englishman, and in the midst of national and professional prejudices, unsoftened by cultivation, retains some of the noblest endowments of humanity. — Mary Shelley

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

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

Precious attribute of woe-worn humanity! that can snatch ecstatic emotion, even from under the very share and harrow, that ruthlessly ploughs up and lays waste every hope. — 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