Top 380 Mary Shelley Quotes (2026 Update)
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201. “These are the reflections of the first days; but when the lapse of time proves the reality of the evil, then the actual bitterness of grief commences.”

— Mary Shelley

202. “I am thy creature, and I will be even mild and docile to my natural lord and king, if thou wilt also perform thy part, the which thou owest me.”

— Mary Shelley

203. “Accursed creator! Why did you form a monster so hideous that even you turned from me in disgust? God, in pity, made man beautiful and alluring, after his own image; but my form is a filthy type of yours, more horrid even from the very resemblance. Satan had his companions, fellow devils, to admire and encourage him, but I am solitary and abhorred.”

— Mary Shelley

204. “Prepare! your toils only begin: wrap yourself in furs, and provide food, for we shall soon enter upon a journey where your sufferings will satisfy my everlasting hatred.”

— Mary Shelley

205. “Ah! It is well for the unfortunate to be resigned, but for the guilty there is no peace. The agonies of remorse poison the luxury there is otherwise sometimes found in indulging the excess of grief.”

— Mary Shelley

206. “But liberty had been a useless gift to me had I not, as I awakened to reason, at the same time awakened to revenge.”

— Mary Shelley

207. “My life might have been passed in ease and luxury; but I preferred glory to every enticement that wealth placed in my path.”

— Mary Shelley

208. “Life and death appeared to me ideal bounds, which I should first break through, and pour a torrent of light into our dark world. A new species would bless me as its creator and source; many happy and excellent natures would owe their being to me.”

— Mary Shelley

209. “But revenge kept me alive; I dared not die and leave my adversary in being.”

— Mary Shelley

210. “I am full of fears; for if I fail there, I am an outcast in the world for ever.”

— Mary Shelley

211. “He can no longer be a fit subject for pity; the survivors are the greatest sufferers, and for them time is the only consolation.”

— Mary Shelley

212. “All men hate the wretched; how then must I be hated, who am miserable beyond all living things!”

— Mary Shelley

213. “Sometimes I endeavoured to gain from Frankenstein the particulars of his creature’s formation; but on this point he was impenetrable.”

— Mary Shelley

214. “I am alone – quite alone – in the world – the blight of misfortune has passed over me and withered me; I know that I am about to die and I feel happy – joyous.”

— Mary Shelley

215. “I am, by a course of strange events, become the most miserable of mortals. Persecuted and tortured as I am and have been, can death be any evil to me?”

— Mary Shelley

216. “The choice is with us; let us will it, and our habitation becomes a paradise. For the will of man is omnipotent, blunting the arrows of death, soothing the bed of disease, and wiping away the tears of agony.”

— Mary Shelley

217. “I came out, my morals unimproved, my hatred to my oppressors encreased tenfold. Bread and water did not tame my blood, nor solitary confinement inspire me with gentle thoughts. I was angry, impatient, miserable; my only happy hours were those during which I devised schemes of revenge... years passed on, and years only added fresh love of freedom, and contempt for all that was not as wild and rude as myself.”

— Mary Shelley

218. “I will revenge my injuries: if I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear;.”

— Mary Shelley

219. “Despondency rarely visited my heart; a high destiny seemed to bear me on, until I fell, never never again to rise.”

— Mary Shelley

220. “Sometimes I wished to express my sensations in my own mode, but the uncouth and inarticulate sounds which broke from me frightened me into silence again.”

— Mary Shelley

221. “But is it not a duty to the survivors, that we should refrain from augmenting their unhappiness by an appearance of immoderate grief?”

— Mary Shelley

222. “They call this retribution. Hateful name! When that word is pronounced, I know greater and more horrid punishments are going to be inflicted than the gloomiest tyrant has ever invented to satiate his utmost revenge.”

— Mary Shelley

223. “Man,” I cried, “how ignorant art thou in thy pride of wisdom! Cease; you know not what it is you say.”

— Mary Shelley

224. “He may be innocent of the murder, but he has certainly a bad conscience.”

— Mary Shelley

225. “I could not sustain the horror of my situation, and when I perceived that the popular voice and the countenances of the judges had already condemned my unhappy victim, I rushed out of the court in agony. The tortures of the accused did not equal mine; she was sustained by innocence, but the fangs of remorse tore my bosom and would not forgo their hold.”

— Mary Shelley

226. “Monsters, says Mary, are of our own making.”

— Mary Shelley

227. “Sometimes, on the very brink of certainty, I failed; yet still I clung to the hope which the next day or the next hour might realise.”

— Mary Shelley

228. “In an evil hour I subscribed to a lie, and now only am I truly miserable.”

— Mary Shelley

229. “It was with these feelings that I began the creation of a human being.”

— Mary Shelley

230. “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 tranquillity. I do not think that the pursuit of knowledge is an exception to this rule.”

— Mary Shelley

231. “Peace, peace! learn my miseries, and do not seek to increase your own.”

— Mary Shelley

232. “I wandered for ever about these lovely solitudes, gathering flower after flower.”

— Mary Shelley

233. “It seemed to me as if nothing would or could ever be known. All that had so long engaged my attention suddenly grew despicable.”

— Mary Shelley

234. “So true it is, that man’s mind alone was the creator of all that was good or great to man, and that Nature herself was only his first minister.”

— Mary Shelley

235. “You travelled to seek happiness, but a fatality seems to pursue you.”

— Mary Shelley

236. “I said, that the employments of a prosperous farmer, if they were not a more honourable, they were at least a happier species of occupation than that of a judge, whose misfortune it was always to meddle with the dark side of human nature.”

— Mary Shelley

237. “Frightful the storm which embraced the gallant vessel on its course and wrecked it-thus!”

— Mary Shelley

238. “If I have no ties and no affections, hatred and vice must be my portion; the love of another will destroy the cause of my crimes.”

— Mary Shelley

239. “But it is even so; the fallen angel becomes a malignant devil.”

— Mary Shelley

240. “Oh! be men, or be more than men. Be steady to your purposes, and firm as a rock.”

— Mary Shelley

241. “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. I wished sometimes to shake off all thought and feeling; but I learned that there was but one means to overcome the sensation of pain, and that was death – a state which I feared yet did not understand.”

— Mary Shelley

242. “My own spirits were high, and I bounded along with feelings of unbridled joy and hilarity.”

— Mary Shelley

243. “Some weeks before this period I had procured a sledge and dogs, and thus traversed the snows with inconceivable speed.”

— Mary Shelley

244. “Once my fancy was soothed with dreams of virtue, of fame, and of enjoyment. Once I falsely hoped to meet with beings, who, pardoning my outward form, would love me for the excellent qualities which I was capable of bringing forth.”

— Mary Shelley

245. “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.”

— Mary Shelley

246. “You are in the wrong,” replied the fiend; “and, instead of threatening, I am content to reason with you.”

— Mary Shelley

247. “Every thought that was devoted to it was an extreme anguish, and every word that I spoke in allusion to it caused my lips to quiver, and my heart to palpitate.”

— Mary Shelley

248. “These reflections have dispelled the agitation with which I began my letter and I feel my heart glow with an enthusiasm whcih elevates me to heaven, for nothing contributes so much to tranqualize the mind as a steady purpose – a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye.”

— Mary Shelley

249. “I am sorry that I am alive to feel this misery and horror.”

— Mary Shelley

250. “Was my dream but a mirror of the truth?”

— Mary Shelley