98 Best Mary Shelley Quotes
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley was a British novelist, essayist, short story writer, dramatist, travel writer and biographer known for her Gothic novel ‘Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus’. Despite the critics being skeptical about the storyline of the novel, it gained positive reviews after the mid 20th century with various theatrical adaptations. Major critics have appreciated the aesthetic and moral value of her work which has also been a subject of study for female criticism and psychoanalytic behavior. Mary also edited the works of her poet and philosopher husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley. Her theme of writing generated dark introspection of human mind and its ways. We have curated some of Shelley’s quotes from her novels, books, essays, short stories etc. Let’s take a look at Mary Shelley’s best quotes.
Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change.
Beware; for I am fearless, and therefore powerful.
No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks.
Life, although it may only be an accumulation of anguish, is dear to me, and I will defend it.
If I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear!
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.
The beginning is always today.
I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel...
Solitude was my only consolation - deep, dark, deathlike solitude.
There is something at work in my soul, which I do not understand.
The companions of our childhood always possess a certain power over our minds which hardly any later friend can obtain.
Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void but out of chaos.
Nothing contributes so much to tranquilize the mind as a steady purpose
Satan has his companions, fellow-devils, to admire and encourage him; but I am solitary and detested.
The world to me was a secret, which I desired to discover; to her it was a vacancy, which she sought to people with imaginations of her own.
When falsehood can look so like the truth, who can assure themselves of certain happiness?
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.
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.
Learn from my miseries, and do not seek to increase your own.
The whole series of my life appeared to me as a dream; I sometimes doubted if indeed it were all true, for it never presented itself to my mind with the force of reality.
How mutable are our feelings, and how strange is that clinging love we have of life even in the excess of misery!
With how many things are we on the brink of becoming acquainted, if cowardice or carelessness did not restrain our inquiries.
Man," I cried, "how ignorant art thou in thy pride of wisdom!
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.
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!
Thus strangely are our souls constructed, and by slight ligaments are we bound to prosperity and ruin.
My dreams were all my own; I accounted for them to nobody; they were my refuge when annoyed - my dearest pleasure when free.
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.
I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend. Make me happy, and I shall again be virtuous.
The world was to me a secret which I desired to devine.
