Mary Shelley Quotes

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

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

Mary Shelley
She was no longer that happy creature who in earlier youth wandered with me on the banks of the lake and talked with ecstasy of our future prospects. The first of those sorrows which are sent to wean us from the earth had visited her, and its dimming influence quenched her dearest smiles.

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
Men become cannibals of their own hearts; remorse, regret, and restless impatience usurp the place of more wholesome feeling: every thing seems better than that which is.

Mary Shelley
Oh! Stars and clouds and winds, ye are all about to mock me; if ye really pity me, crush sensation and memory; let me become as nought; but if not, depart, depart, and leave me in darkness.

Mary Shelley
All judges had rather that ten innocent should suffer than that one guilty should escape.

Mary Shelley
If the study to which you apply yourself has a tendency to weaken your affections, and to destroy your taste for those simple pleasures in which no alloy can possibly mix, then that study is certainly unlawful, that is to say, not befitting the human mind.

Mary Shelley
I have good dispositions; my life has been hitherto harmless and in some degree beneficial; but a fatal prejudice clouds their eyes, and where they ought to see a feeling and kind friend, they behold only a detestable monster.

Mary Shelley
All men hate the wretched; how, then, must I be hated, who am miserable beyond all living things! Yet you, my creator, detest and spurn me, thy creature, to whom thou art bound by ties only dissoluble by the annihilation of one of us.

Mary Shelley
Some years ago, when the images which this world affords first opened upon me, when I felt the cheering warmth of summer and heard the rustling of the leaves and the warbling of the birds, and these were all to me, I should have wept to die; now it is my only consolation. Polluted by crimes and torn by the bitterest remorse, where can I find rest but in death?

Mary Shelley
I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life, and stir with an uneasy, half vital motion. Frightful must it be; for supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavour to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world.

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

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

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

Mary Shelley
I see by your eagerness, and the wonder and hope which your eyes express, my friend, that you expect to be in formed of the secret with which I am acquainted. That cannot be.

Mary Shelley
Oh! grief is fantastic; it weaves a web on which to trace the history of its woe from every form and change around; it incorporates itself with all living nature; it finds sustenance in every object; as light, it fills all things, and, like light, it gives its own colors to all.

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

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 Shelley
I gave her cakes, I gave her wine,
I gave her sugar-candy,
But oh! the little naughty girl,
She asked me for some brandy.

Mary Shelley
In the evening Hogg comes. I like him better each time; it is a pity that he is a lawyer; he wasted so much time on that trash that might be spent on better things.

Mary Shelley
I beheld the wretch—the miserable monster whom I had created.

Mary Shelley
My reign is not yet over... you live, and my power is complete. Follow me; I seek the everlasting ices of the north, where you will feel the misery of cold and frost to which I am impassive. You will find near this place, if you follow not too tardily, a dead hare; eat and be refreshed. Come on, my enemy; we have yet to wrestle for our lives; but many hard and miserable hours must you endure until that period shall arrive.

Mary Shelley
His science was simply human and human science, I soon convinced myself, could never conquer nature's laws so far as to imprison the soul.

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

Mary Shelley
My candle was nearly burnt out, when, by the glimmer of the half-extinguished light, I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open.

Mary Shelley
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.

Mary Shelley
I shall thus give a general answer to the question, so frequently asked me—"How I, then a young girl, came to think of, and to dilate upon, so very hideous an idea?"

Mary Shelley
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.

Mary Shelley