Mary Shelley Quotes

“There is something at work in my soul, which I do not understand.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

“I looked upon the sea, it was to be my grave”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

“I discover that grief means living with someone who is no longer there.”
― Jeanette Winterson, Frankissstein: A Love Story

“Although I may not be yours, I can never be another’s.”
― Mary Shelley

“More than anything, I began to hate women writers. Frances Burney, Jane Austen, Elizabeth Browning, Mary Shelley, George Eliot, Virginia Woolf. Bronte, Bronte, and Bronte. I began to resent Emily, Anne, and Charlotte—my old friends—with a terrifying passion. They were not only talented; they were brave, a trait I admired more than anything but couldn't seem to possess. The world that raised these women hadn't allowed them to write, yet they had spun fiery novels in spite of all the odds. Meanwhile, I was failing with all the odds tipped in my favor. Here I was, living out Virginia Woolf's wildest feminist fantasy. I was in a room of my own. The world was no longer saying, "Write? What's the good of your writing?" but was instead saying "Write if you choose; it makes no difference to me.”
― Catherine Lowell, The Madwoman Upstairs

“With an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, I collected the instruments of life around me, that I might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet. It was already one in the morning; the rain pattered dismally against the panes, and my candle was nearly out, when, by the glimmer of the half-extinguished light, I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open; it breathed hard, and a convulsive motion agitated its limbs.”
― Mary Shelley (Frankenstein)

“Remember that I have power; you believe yourself miserable, but I can make you so wretched that the light of day will be hateful to you. You are my creator, but I am your master--obey!”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein: The 1818 Text

“From you only could I hope for succour, although towards you I felt no sentiment but that of hatred. Unfeeling, heartless creator! You had endowed me with perceptions and passions and then cast me abroad an object for the scorn and horror of mankind.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

“If such lovely creatures were miserable, it was less strange that I, an imperfect and solitary being. should be wretched.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

“I do not know,' said the man, 'what the custom of the English may be; but it is the custom of the Irish to hate villains.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein: The 1818 Text

“Mary Shelley changed the whole world.”
― Kiersten White, The Dark Descent of Elizabeth Frankenstein

“Nuestras almas están formadas de muy extraña manera y nuestras vidas penden solo de leves lazos, cuya rotura puede arrojarlas a la prosperidad o la ruina.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein: The 1818 Text

“I busied myself to think of a story, —a story to rival those which had excited us to this task. One which would speak to the mysterious fears of our nature, and awaken thrilling horror—one to make the reader dread to look round, to curdle the blood, and quicken the beatings of the heart.”
― Mary Shelley

“My present situation was one in which all voluntary thought was swallowed up and lost.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein: The 1818 Text

“But my enthusiasm was checked by my anxiety, and I appeared rather like one doomed by slavery to toil in the mines, or any other unwholesome trade than an artist occupied by his favorite employment.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

“Your mum wrote that girls can do whatever," Ada continued. "Education. Profession."
Mary, now fully engaged, put down her book.
"My dear Ada, my mother wrote about how things ought to be, not how they are."
Ada continued looking displeased, which made Mary go on. "Of course, how are things to be the way they ought, unless we make them so?”
― Jordan Stratford, The Case of the Missing Moonstone

“Can you miss someone you've never known?

Mary does.”
― Linda Bailey, Mary Who Wrote Frankenstein

“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? ”
― Mary shelley, Frankenstein

“My possessions are at your service,' I replied bitterly-'my poverty, my exile, my disgrace I make a free gift of them all.”
― Mary Shelly

“Oh expectation, what a frightful thing art thou, when kindled more by fear than hope!”
― Mary Shelley

“He [Shelley] told me that he had had many visions lately; he had seen the figure of himself, which met him as he walked on the terrace and said to him, 'How long do you mean to be content?”
― Mary Shelley

“I seemed to have lost all soul or sensation but for this one pursuit”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein: The 1818 Text

“Letter II

To Mrs. Saville, England.

Archangel, 28th March, 17—.

How slowly the time passes here, encompassed as I am by frost and snow! Yet a second step is taken towards my enterprise. I have hired a vessel and am occupied in collecting my sailors; those whom I have already engaged appear to be men on whom I can depend and are certainly possessed of dauntless courage.

But I have one want which I have never yet been able to satisfy, and the absence of the object of which I now feel as a most severe evil, I have no friend, Margaret: when I am glowing with the enthusiasm of success, there will be none to participate my joy; if I am assailed by disappointment, no one will endeavour to sustain me in dejection. I shall commit my thoughts to paper, it is true; but that is a poor medium for the communication of feeling. I desire the company of a man who could sympathise with me, whose eyes would reply to mine. You may deem me romantic, my dear sister, but I bitterly feel the want of a friend. I have no one near me, gentle yet courageous, possessed of a cultivated as well as of a capacious mind, whose tastes are like my own, to approve or amend my plans. How would such a friend repair the faults of your poor brother! I am too ardent in execution and too impatient of difficulties. But it is a still greater evil to me that I am self-educated: for the first fourteen years of my life I ran wild on a common and read nothing but our Uncle Thomas' books of voyages. At that age I became acquainted with the celebrated poets of our own country; but it was only when it had ceased to be in my power to derive its most important benefits from such a conviction that I perceived the necessity of becoming acquainted with more languages than that of my native country. Now I am twenty-eight and am in reality more illiterate than many schoolboys of fifteen. It is true that I have thought more and that my daydreams are more extended and magnificent, but they want (as the painters call it) keeping; and I greatly need a friend who would have sense enough not to despise me as romantic, and affection enough for me to endeavour to regulate my mind.”
― Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein

“You will rejoice to hear that no disaster has accompanied the commencement of an enterprise which you have regarded with such evil forebodings.”
― Mary Shelly, Frankenstein

“What have we left to dream about? The clouds are no longer the charioted servants of the sun, nor does he any more bathe his glowing brow in the bath of Thetis; the rainbow has ceased to be the messenger of the Gods, and hunger longer their awful voice, warning man of that which is to come. We have the sun which has been weighed and measured, but not understood; we have the assemblage of the planets, the congregation of the stars, and the yet unshackled ministration of the winds: - such is the list of our ignorance.”
― Mary Shelley

“En todas partes veo la felicidad, de la que sólo yo me encuentro irrevocablemente excluido”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

“Si la mentira se parece tanto a la verdad, ¿quién puede estar seguro de alcanzar alguna felicidad?”
― Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein Or the Modern Prometheus: Mary Shelley's Gothic Masterpiece: Unveiling the Romantic Tale of Victor Frankenstein and His Creation

“Our husbands decide without asking our consent, or having our concurrence; for, to tell you the truth, I hate this boat, though I say nothing." Mary Shelley to Jane Williams, talking the boat that Shelley and his friend Williams bought.”
― Ivan Roe, Shelley: The Last Phase

“As one learns from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein—and all the media that has since made that story its ancestor—a creation’s first act is to free itself of its creator, violently if necessary.”
― Thomm Quackenbush, The Curious Case of the Talking Mongoose

“These were the days of the big smokey rooms overflowing with recovering drunks of every race, creed, and color. I relished the opportunity to accompany Mom to her meetings. You could sit in the back of those rooms and hear the sort of Frankenstein tales even Mary Shelley couldn’t have written.”
― Rafael Moscatel, The Bastard of Beverly Hills: A Memoir