Top 380 Mary Shelley Quotes (2026 Update)
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151. “The labours I endured were no longer to be alleviated by the bright sun or gentle breezes of spring; all joy was but a mockery, which insulted my desolate state, and made me feel more painfully that I was not made for the enjoyment of pleasure.”

— Mary Shelley

152. “Solitude becomes a sort of tangible enemy, the more dangerous, because it dwells within the citadel itself.”

— Mary Shelley

153. “What terrified me will terrify others; and I need only describe the spectre which had haunted my midnight pillow.”

— Mary Shelley

154. “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 Shelley

155. “I confess to you, my friend, that I love you and that in my airy dreams of futurity you have been my constant friend and companion.”

— Mary Shelley

156. “I am alone and miserable: man will not associate with me; but one as deformed and horrible as myself would not deny herself to me. My companion must be of the same species and have the same defects. This being you must create.”

— Mary Shelley

157. “I am malicious because I am miserable. Am I not shunned and hated by all mankind? You, my creator, would tear me to pieces and triumph; remember that, and tell me why I should pity man more than he pities me?”

— Mary Shelley

158. “Heaven shower down blessings on you, and save me, that I may again and again testify my gratitude for all your love and kindness.”

— Mary Shelley

159. “There was none among the myriads of men that existed who would pity or assist me; and should I feel kindness towards my enemies? No; from that moment I declared everlasting war against the species, and more than all, against him who had formed me and sent me forth to this insupportable misery.”

— Mary Shelley

160. “The untaught peasant beheld the elements around him and was acquainted with their practical uses. The most learned philosopher knew little more.”

— Mary Shelley

161. “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.”

— Mary Shelley

162. “I am the assassin of those most innocent victims; they died by my machinations.”

— Mary Shelley

163. “Wandering spirits, if indeed ye wander, and do not rest in your narrow beds, allow me this faint happiness, or take me, as your companion, away from the joys of life.”

— Mary Shelley

164. “What a glorious creature must he have been in the days of his prosperity, when he is thus noble and godlike in ruin. He seems to feel his own worth, and the greatness of his fall.”

— Mary Shelley

165. “That is also my victim!” he exclaimed; “in his murder my crimes are consummated; the miserable series of my being is wound to its close! Oh, Frankenstein! generous and self-devoted being! what does it avail that I now ask thee to pardon me? I, who irretrievably destroyed thee by destroying all thou lovedst. Alas! he is cold; he may not answer me.”

— Mary Shelley

166. “I will pioneer a new way, explore unknown powers, and unfold to the world the deepest mysteries of creation.”

— Mary Shelley

167. “It is true, we shall be monsters, cut off from all the world; but on that account we shall be more attached to one another. Our lives will not be happy, but they will be harmless and free from the misery I now feel.”

— Mary Shelley

168. “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

169. “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

170. “Such were the professor’s words – rather let me say such the words of the fate – enounced to destroy me. As he went on I felt as if my soul were grappling with a palpable enemy; one by one the various keys were touched which formed the mechanism of my being; chord after chord was sounded, and soon my mind was filled with one thought, one conception, one purpose.”

— Mary Shelley

171. “And the violet lay dead while the odour flew On the wings of the wind o’er the waters blue.”

— Mary Shelley

172. “Must I then lose this admirable being? I have longed for a friend; I have sought one who would sympathise with and love me. Behold, on these desert seas I have found such a one; but I fear I have gained him only to know his value and lose him. I would reconcile him to life, but he repulses the idea.”

— Mary Shelley

173. “I love you very tenderly. Remember me with affection, should you never hear from me again.”

— Mary Shelley

174. “For this I had deprived myself of rest and health. I had desired it with an ardour that far exceeded moderation; but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart.”

— Mary Shelley

175. “These were wild and miserable thoughts; but I cannot describe to you how the eternal twinkling of the stars weighed upon me, and how I listened to every blast of wind, as if it were a dull ugly siroc on its way to consume me.”

— Mary Shelley

176. “And I call on you, spirits of the dead; and on you, wandering ministers of vengeance, to aid and conduct me in my work. Let the cursed and hellish monster drink deep of agony; let him feel the despair that now torments me.”

— Mary Shelley

177. “Of what a strange nature is knowledge! It clings to the mind, when it has once seized on it, like a lichen on the rock.”

— Mary Shelley

178. “The time at length arrives when grief is rather an indulgence than a necessity.”

— Mary Shelley

179. “He is eloquent and persuasive; and once his words had even power over my heart: but trust him not. His soul is as hellish as his form, full of treachery and fiend-like malice. Hear.”

— Mary Shelley

180. “Why, all his virtues are derived from his station only; because he is rich, he is called generous; because he is powerful, brave.”

— Mary Shelley

181. “Persecuted and tortured as I am and have been, can death be any evil to me?”

— Mary Shelley

182. “I did not participate in these feelings; for to me the walls of a dungeon or a palace were alike hateful.”

— Mary Shelley

183. “After the murder of Clerval, I returned to Switzerland, heart-broken and overcome. I pitied Frankenstein; my pity amounted to horror: I abhorred myself.”

— Mary Shelley

184. “Begone! I do break my promise; never will I create another like yourself, equal in deformity and wickedness.”

— Mary Shelley

185. “He appeared to despise himself for being the slave of passion.”

— Mary Shelley

186. “I look on the hands which executed the deed; I think on the heart in which the imagination of it was conceived, and long for the moment when these hands will meet my eyes, when that imagination will haunt my thoughts no more.”

— Mary Shelley

187. “I could not consent to the death of any human being; but certainly I should have thought such a creature unfit to remain in the society of men.”

— Mary Shelley

188. “Then the appearance of death was distant, although the wish was ever present to my thoughts, and I often sat for hours motionless and speechless, wishing for some mighty revolution that might bury me and my destroyer in its ruins.”

— Mary Shelley

189. “Perhaps we did not read so many books, or learn languages so quickly, as those who are disciplined according to the ordinary methods; but what we learned was impressed the more deeply on our memories.”

— Mary Shelley

190. “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 Shelley

191. “Our faults are apt to assume giant and exaggerated forms to our eyes in youth.”

— Mary Shelley

192. “God in pity made man beautiful and alluring, after his own image; but my form is a filthy type of yours, more horrid from its very resemblance.”

— Mary Shelley

193. “The companions of our childhood always possess a certain power over our minds which hardly any later friend can obtain.”

— Mary Shelley

194. “Even the eternal skies weep, I thought; is there any shame then, that mortal man should spend himself in tears?”

— Mary Shelley

195. “But the latter obtained my undivided attention: wealth was an inferior object; but what glory would attend the discovery, if I could banish disease from the human frame, and render man invulnerable to any but a violent death!”

— Mary Shelley

196. “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.”

— Mary Shelley

197. “The ambition of the inquirer seemed to limit itself to the annihilation of those visions on which my interest in science was chiefly founded. I was required to exchange chimeras of boundless grandeur for realities of little worth.”

— Mary Shelley

198. “The nearer I approached to your habitation, the more deeply did I feel the spirit of revenge enkindled in my heart.”

— Mary Shelley

199. “I was guiltless, but I had indeed drawn down a horrible curse upon my head, as mortal as that of crime.”

— Mary Shelley

200. “I dared not advance, dreading a thousand nameless evils that made me tremble, although I was unable to define them.”

— Mary Shelley