Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley famous quotes

Beware; for I am fearless, and therefore powerful.
-- Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

#Powerful #New Years Resolution #Fearless

Nothing contributes so much to tranquilize the mind as a steady purpose - a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye.
-- Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

#Inspirational #Stay Strong #Motivation

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 Wollstonecraft Shelley

#Halloween #Eye #Yellow

My dreams were all my own; I accounted for them to nobody; they were my refuge when annoyed - my dearest pleasure when free.
-- Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

#Dream #Annoyed #Pleasure

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

#Wind #Accents #Soothing

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

#Scary #Needs #Midnight

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 Wollstonecraft Shelley

#Tree #Humanity #Soul

What can stop the determined heart and resolved will of man?
-- Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

#Heart #Men #Determined

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

#Causes #Firsts #Recourse

Listen to me, Frankenstein. 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 Wollstonecraft Shelley

#Men #Justice #Murder

For a moment my soul was elevated from its debasing and miserable fears to which these sights were the monuments and the remembrances. For an instant I dared to shake off my chains, and look around me with a free and lofty spirit; but the iron had eaten into my flesh, and I sank again, trembling and hopeless, into my miserable self.
-- Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

#Sight #Self #Iron

But he found that a traveller's life is one that includes much pain amidst its enjoyments. His feelings are for ever on the stretch; and when he begins to sink into repose, he finds himself obliged to quit that on which he rests in pleasure for something new, which again engages his attention, and which also he forsakes for other novelties.
-- Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

#Pain #Feelings #Attention

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

#Misery #Made #Make Me Happy

Why did I not die? More miserable than man ever was before, why did I not sink into forgetfulness and rest? Death snatches away many blooming children, the only hopes of their doting parents: how many brides and youthful lovers have been one day in the bloom of health and hope, and the next a prey for worms and the decay of the tomb! Of what materials was I made, that I could thus resist so many shocks, which, like the turning of the wheel, continually renewed the torture? But I was doomed to live;
-- Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

#Children #Men #Parent

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

#Loneliness #Tranquility #Charm

But her's was the misery of innocence, which, like a cloud that passes over the fair moon, for a while hides, but cannot tarnish its brightness.
-- Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

#Moon #Clouds #Brightness

I cherished hope, it is true, but it vanished when my person reflected . . .
-- Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

#Persons

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 Wollstonecraft Shelley

#Mind #Way #Looks

There is love in me the likes of which you've never seen. There is rage in me the likes of which should never escape. If I am not satisfied int he one, I will indulge the other.
-- Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

#Likes #Rage #Should

The world was to me a secret which I desired to devine.
-- Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

#Secret #World

I feel exquisite pleasure in dwelling on the recollections of childhood, before misfortune had tainted my mind, and changed its bright visions of extensive usefulness into gloomy and narrow reflections upon self.
-- Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

#Reflection #Self #Dwelling

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 Wollstonecraft Shelley

#Heart #Moon #Light

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

#Agony #Feelings #Misery

With how many things are we on the brink of becoming acquainted, if cowardice or carelessness did not restrain our inquiries.
-- Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

#Becoming #Inquiry #Cowardice

Even where the affections are not strongly moved by any superior excellence, the companions of our childhood always possess a certain power over our minds which hardly any later friend can obtain. They know our infantine dispositions, which, however they may be afterwards modified, are never eradicated; and they can judge of our actions with more certain conclusions as to the integrity of our motives.
-- Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

#Integrity #Judging #Childhood

The different accidents of life are not so changeable as the feelings of human nature.
-- Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

#Feelings #Different #Human Nature

My own mind began to grow, watchful with anxoius thoughts.
-- Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

#Mind #Grows

...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 Wollstonecraft Shelley

#Others Happiness #Lips #Needs

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

#Ambition #Discovery #Tranquility

Polluted by crimes, and torn by the bitterest remorse, where can I find rest but in death?
-- Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

#Crime #Torn #Remorse

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.
-- Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

#Angel #Men #Enemy

Nothing is more painful to the human mind than, after the feelings have been worked up by a quick succession of events, the dead calmness of inaction and certainty which follows and deprives the soul both of hope and fear.
-- Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

#Soul #Feelings #Mind

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

#Garden #Venice #Sight

Supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavor to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world.
-- Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

#Would Be #World #Endeavor

When I run over the frightful catalogue of my sins, I cannot believe that I am the same creature whose thoughts were once filled with sublime and transcendent visions of the beauty and the majesty of goodness. But it is even so; the fallen angel becomes a malignant devil.
-- Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

#Running #Believe #Angel

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

#Travel #Instinct #Solitary

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

#Grief #Humanity #Despair

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

#Disappointment #Deities #Events

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

#Loneliness #Grief #Loss

How dreadful it is, to emerge from the oblivion of slumber, and to receive as a good morrow the mute wailing of one's own hapless heart - to return from the land of deceptive dreams to the heavy knowledge of unchanged disaster!
-- Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

#Dream #Grief #Heart

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 Wollstonecraft Shelley

#Grief #Color #Light

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

#Grief #Rain #Men

The time at length arrives, when grief is rather an indulgence than a necessity and the smile that plays upon the lips, although it may be deemed a sacrilege, is not banished.
-- Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

#Grief #Play #May

Happiness is in its highest degree the sister of goodness.
-- Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

#Happiness #Degrees #Goodness

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

#Life #Space #People

marriage is usually considered the grave, and not the cradle of love.
-- Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

#Marriage #Cradle #Graves

The young are always in extremes.
-- Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

#Youth #Young #Extremes

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

#Girl #Women #Destiny

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

#Solitude #Enemy #Tangible

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.
-- Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

#Fear #Heart #Evil

I saw -- with shut eyes, but acute mental vision -- I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. 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.
-- Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

#Art #Powerful #Eye

The day of my departure at length arrived. Clerval spent the last evening with us. He had endeavoured to persuade his father to permit him to accompany me and to become my fellow student, but in vain. His father was a narrow-minded trader, and saw idleness and ruin in the aspirations and ambition of his son. Henry deeply felt the misfortune of being debarred from a liberal education. He said little, but when he spoke I read in his kindling eye and in his animated glance a restrained but firm resolve not to be chained to the miserable details of commerce.
-- Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

#Father #Ambition #Eye

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

#Shut Up #Miserable #Curse

Women are told from their infancy, and taught by the example of their mothers, that a little knowledge of human weakness, justly termed cunning, softness of temper, outward obedience and a scrupulous attention to a puerile kind of propriety, will obtain for them the protection of man.
-- Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

#Mother #Men #Example

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

#Guilt #Guilty #Wells

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 are bound by ties only dissoluble by the annihilation of one of us.
-- Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

#Hate #Science #Men

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

#Wind #Wings #Blue

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

#Self #World #Principles

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

#Exclusion #Bliss

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

#Air #Soul #Atmosphere

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

#Men #Independence #Privilege

After days and nights of incredible labor and fatigue, I succeeded in discovering the cause of generation and life. Nay, more, I became myself capable of bestowing animation upon lifeless matter.
-- Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

#Night #Matter #Causes

A human being in perfection ought always to preserve a calm and peaceful mind and never to allow passion or a transitory desire to disturb his tranquility.
-- Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

#Passion #Perfection #Peaceful

...we are unfashioned creatures, but half made up, if one wiser, better, dearer than ourselves - such a friend ought to be - do not lend his aid to perfectionate our weak and faulty natures.
-- Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

#Half #Weak #Aids

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

#Men #Genius #Failing

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

#Inspire #Causes #Inspire Love

If you will comply with my conditions, I will leave them and you at peace; but if you refuse, I will glut the maw of death, until it be satiated with the blood of your remaining friends.
-- Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

#Blood #Refuse

If our impulses were confined to hunger, thirst, and desire, we might be nearly free; but now we are moved by every wind that blows and a chance word or scene that that word may convey to us.
-- Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

#Blow #Wind #Desire

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 Wollstonecraft Shelley

#Eye #Secret #Wonder

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

#Devil #Satan #Admire

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

#Devil #Arms #Fierce

Of what a strange nature is knowledge! It clings to a mind when it has once seized on it like a lichen on a rock." - Frankenstein p115
-- Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

#Leadership #Knowledge #Rocks

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

#Loneliness #Dark #Solitude

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

#Monsters #Miserable #Creation

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

#Remembrance

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

#May #Accumulation #Dear

Thus strangely are our souls constructed, and by slight ligaments are we bound to prosperity and ruin.
-- Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

#Soul #Ruins #Prosperity

A truce to philosophy!—Life is before me, and I rush into possession. Hope, glory, love, and blameless ambition are my guides, and my soul knows no dread. What has been, though sweet, is gone; the present is good only because it is about to change, and the to come is all my own.
-- Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

#Sweet #Philosophy #Ambition

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 Wollstonecraft Shelley

#Eye #Dark #Expression