Top 380 Mary Shelley Quotes (2025 Update)
Page 6 of 8

251. “An open and capacious forehead gave indications of a good understanding, joined to great frankness of disposition.”

— Mary Shelley

252. “You hate me; but your abhorrence cannot equal that with which I regard myself. 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 they will meet my eyes, when it haunt my thoughts, no more.”

— Mary Shelley

253. “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

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

— Mary Shelley

255. “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

256. “The agonies of remorse poison the luxury there is otherwise sometimes found in indulging the excess of grief.”

— Mary Shelley

257. “You hate me; but your abhorrence cannot equal that with which I regard myself.”

— Mary Shelley

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

— Mary Shelley

259. “I have but one passion ; it swallows up every other ; it dwells with my darling books, and is fed by the treasures of beauty and wisdom which they contain.”

— Mary Shelley

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

— Mary Shelley

261. “But soon,” he cried, with sad and solemn enthusiasm, “I shall die, and what I now feel be no longer felt. Soon these burning miseries will be extinct. I shall.”

— Mary Shelley

262. “I shuddered when I thought of the possible consequences of my consent; but I felt that there was some justice in his argument.”

— Mary Shelley

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

— Mary Shelley

264. “Yet he enjoys one comfort, the offspring of solitude and delirium: he believes, that, when in dreams he holds converse with his friends, and derives from that communion consolation for his miseries, or excitements to his vengeance, that they are not the creations of his fancy, but the real beings who visit him from the regions of a remote world.”

— Mary Shelley

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

— Mary Shelley

266. “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

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

— Mary Shelley

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

— Mary Shelley

269. “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

270. “Inspirited by this wind of promise, my daydreams become more fervent and vivid.”

— Mary Shelley

271. “The poor victim, who on the morrow was to pass the awful boundary between life and death, felt not, as I did, such deep and bitter agony. I gnashed my teeth and ground them together, uttering a groan that came from my inmost soul.”

— Mary Shelley

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

— Mary Shelley

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

— Mary Shelley

274. “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

275. “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

276. “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

277. “Like one who, on a lonely road, Doth walk in fear and dread, And, having once turned round, walks on, And turns no more his head; Because he knows a frightful fiend Doth close behind him tread. Continuing thus, I came at length opposite to the inn at which the various diligences and carriages usually stopped.”

— Mary Shelley

278. “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

279. “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

280. “The winter has been dreadfully severe, but the spring promises well.”

— Mary Shelley

281. “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

282. “The conclusion of this speech convinced my father that my ideas were deranged, and he instantly changed the subject of our conversation, and endeavoured to alter the course of my thoughts. He.”

— Mary Shelley

283. “Even broken in spirit as he is, no one can feel more deeply than he does the beauties of nature. The starry sky, the sea, and every sight afforded by these wonderful regions seem still to have the power of elevating his soul from earth. Such a man has a double existence: he may suffer misery and be overwhelmed by disappointments, yet when he has retired into himself, he will be like a celestial spirit that has a halo around him, within whose circle no grief or folly ventures.”

— Mary Shelley

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

— Mary Shelley

285. “I learned that there was but one means to overcome the sensation of pain, and that was death.”

— Mary Shelley

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

— Mary Shelley

287. “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

288. “My heart, which was before sorrowful, now swelled with something like joy;.”

— Mary Shelley

289. “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

290. “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

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

— Mary Shelley

292. “On every point of general literature he displays unbounded knowledge, and a quick and piercing apprehension. His eloquence is forcible and touching;.”

— Mary Shelley

293. “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

294. “My dear Frankenstein,” exclaimed Henry, when he perceived me weep with bitterness, “are you always to be unhappy? My dear friend, what has happened?”

— Mary Shelley

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

— Mary Shelley

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

— Mary Shelley

297. “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

298. “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

299. “I remembered the effect that the view of the tremendous and ever-moving glacier had produced upon my mind when I first saw it. It had filled me with the sublime ecstacy that gave wings to the soul, and allowed it to soar from the obscure world to light and joy. The sight of the awful and majestic in nature had indeed always the effect of solemnizing my mind, and causing me to forget the passing cares of life.”

— Mary Shelley

300. “These tales excited in us a playful desire of imitation.”

— Mary Shelley