Top 380 Mary Shelley Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Beware; for I am fearless, and therefore powerful.”

— Mary Shelley

Featured in: Self-Belief Quotes

2. “The beginning is always today.”

— Mary Shelley

3. “No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks.”

— Mary Shelley

4. “Live, and be happy, and make others so.”

— Mary Shelley

Featured in: Be Kind Quotes, Enjoy Life Quotes, Compassion Quotes, Joy Quotes

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

— Mary Shelley

6. “Solitude was my only consolation – deep, dark, deathlike solitude.”

— Mary Shelley

Featured in: Sad Quotes, Depression Quotes, Loneliness Quotes, Sadness Quotes

7. “If I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear!”

— Mary Shelley

8. “You are my creator, but I am your master.”

— Mary Shelley

9. “Nothing contributes so much to tranquilize the mind as a steady purpose – a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye.”

— Mary Shelley

10. “The fallen angel becomes a malignant devil.”

— Mary Shelley

11. “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 Shelley

Featured in: Justice Quotes

12. “Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change. The sun might shine, or the clouds might lour: but nothing could appear to me as it had done the day before.”

— Mary Shelley

13. “One man’s life or death were but a small price to pay for the acquirement of the knowledge which I sought.”

— Mary Shelley

14. “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 Shelley

15. “He was soon borne away by the waves and lost in darkness and distance.”

— Mary Shelley

Featured in: Distance Quotes

16. “Curiosity, earnest research to learn the hidden laws of nature, gladness akin to rapture, as they unfolded to me, are among the earliest sensations I can remember.”

— Mary Shelley

17. “My dreams were all my own; I accounted for them to nobody; they were my refuge when annoyed – my dearest pleasure when free.”

— Mary Shelley

18. “Evil thenceforth became my good.”

— Mary Shelley

19. “I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend. Make me happy, and I shall again be virtuous.”

— Mary Shelley

20. “Life, although it may only be an accumulation of anguish, is dear to me, and I will defend it.”

— Mary Shelley

21. “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

22. “Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void, but out of chaos.”

— Mary Shelley

23. “So much has been done, exclaimed the soul of Frankenstein – more, far more, will I achieve; treading in the steps already marked, I will pioneer a new way, explore unknown powers, and unfold to the world the deepest mysteries of creation.”

— Mary Shelley

24. “A mind of moderate capacity which closely pursues one study must infallibly arrive at great proficiency in that study.”

— Mary Shelley

Featured in: Study Quotes

25. “I beheld the wretch-the miserable monster whom I had created.”

— Mary Shelley

26. “But soon, I shall die, and what I now feel be no longer felt. Soon these burning miseries will be extinct.”

— Mary Shelley

27. “We are fashioned creatures, but half made up. – Victor Frankenstein.”

— Mary Shelley

28. “I am malicious because I am miserable.”

— Mary Shelley

29. “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 Shelley

30. “I am alone and miserable. Only someone as ugly as I am could love me.”

— Mary Shelley

31. “There is something at work in my soul, which I do not understand.”

— Mary Shelley

32. “I saw and heard of none like me. Was I then a monster, a blot upon the earth, from which all men fled, and whom all men disowned?”

— Mary Shelley

33. “The very winds whispered in soothing accents, and maternal Nature bade me weep no more.”

— Mary Shelley

34. “How mutable are our feelings, and how strange is that clinging love we have of life even in the excess of misery!”

— Mary Shelley

35. “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.”

— Mary Shelley

36. “Life and death appeared to me ideal bounds, which I should first break through, and pour a torrent of light into our dark world.”

— Mary Shelley

37. “I, a miserable wretch, haunted by a curse that shut up every avenue to enjoyment.”

— Mary Shelley

38. “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 Shelley

39. “It was the secrets of heaven and earth that I desired to learn.”

— Mary Shelley

40. “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.”

— Mary Shelley

41. “With how many things are we on the brink of becoming acquainted, if cowardice or carelessness did not restrain our inquiries.”

— Mary Shelley

42. “I required kindness and sympathy, but I did not believe myself utterly unworthy of it.”

— Mary Shelley

43. “My spirit will sleep in peace; or if it thinks, it will not surely think thus. Farewell.”

— Mary Shelley

44. “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

45. “Polluted by crimes, and torn by the bitterest remorse, where can I find rest but in death?”

— Mary Shelley

46. “The world was to me a secret which I desired to devine.”

— Mary Shelley

47. “My education was neglected, yet I was passionately fond of reading.”

— Mary Shelley

Featured in: Reading Quotes

48. “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 Shelley

49. “The guilty are allowed, by human laws, bloody as they are, to speak in their own defence before they are condemned.”

— Mary Shelley

50. “My own mind began to grow, watchful with anxoius thoughts.”

— Mary Shelley