Top 380 Mary Shelley Quotes (2024 Update)
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301. “Los acontecimientos que influyen decisivamente en nuestros destinos a menudo tienen su origen en sucesos triviales.”

— Mary Shelley

302. “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

303. “And wherefore was it glorious? Not because the way was smooth and placid as a southern sea, but because it was full of dangers and terror, because at every new incident your fortitude was to be called forth and your courage exhibited, because danger and death surrounded it, and these you were to brave and overcome. For this was it a glorious, for this was it an honourable undertaking.”

— Mary Shelley

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

— Mary Shelley

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

— Mary Shelley

306. “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

307. “Why cannot human language express human thoughts? And how is it that there is a feeling inspired by the excess of beauty, which laps the heart in a gentle but eager flame, which may inspire virtue and love, but the feeling is far too intense for expression?”

— Mary Shelley

308. “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

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

— Mary Shelley

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

— Mary Shelley

311. “He turned on hearing a noise, and perceiving me, shrieked loudly, and quitting the hut, ran across the fields with a speed of which his debilitated form hardly appeared capable.”

— Mary Shelley

312. “My proud step was no interpreter of my heart, for I deeply felt that, though surrounded by every luxury, I was a beggar.”

— Mary Shelley

313. “This is thy funeral, this thy dirge!”

— Mary Shelley

314. “I lived in a desolate country where there were none to praise and very few to love.”

— Mary Shelley

315. “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

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

— Mary Shelley

317. “Believe me, if you beheld on lips with grief one smile of joy and gratitude, and knew that you were parent of that smile and that without you it had never been, you would feel so pure and warm a happiness that you’d wish to live forever again and again to enjoy the same pleasure.”

— Mary Shelley

318. “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

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

— Mary Shelley

320. “O, daca macar o singura voce m-ar imbarbata soptindu-mi ca am dreptate! Curajul si hotararea mea sunt neabatute, dar sperantele se clatina si sufletul imi sta adesea in cumpana. Sunt pe cale de a porni intr-o calatorie lunga si grea si voi avea nevoie de toata indrazneala si taria pentru a invinge restristile. Va trebui nu numai sa-i imbarbatez pe ceilalti cand vor sovai, ci uneori si pe mine insumi.”

— Mary Shelley

321. “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 doating 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

322. “I read and studied the wild fancies of these writers with delight; they appeared to me treasures known to few besides myself.”

— Mary Shelley

323. “This passion is detrimental to me; for you do not reflect that you are the cause of its excess.”

— Mary Shelley

324. “My protectors had departed, and had broken the only link that held me to the world. For the first time the feelings of revenge and hatred filled my bosom, and I did not strive to control them; but, allowing myself to be borne away by the stream, I bent my mind towards injury and death.”

— Mary Shelley

325. “If the study to which you apply yourself has a tendency to weaken.”

— Mary Shelley

326. “Learn from me, dear lady, to submit in patience to the will of heaven!”

— Mary Shelley

327. “I have consented to return, if we are not destroyed. Thus are my hopes blasted by cowardice and indecision; I come back ignorant and disappointed. It requires more philosophy than I possess, to bear this injustice with patience.”

— Mary Shelley

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

— Mary Shelley

329. “The wretch saw me destroy the creature on whose future existence he depended for happiness, and, with.”

— Mary Shelley

330. “Oh, that some encouraging voice would answer in the affirmative! My courage and my resolution is firm; but my hopes fluctuate, and my spirits are often depressed. I am about to proceed on a long and difficult voyage, the emergencies of which will demand all my fortitude: I am required not only to raise the spirits of others, but sometimes to sustain my own, when theirs are failing.”

— Mary Shelley

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

— Mary Shelley

332. “I was often tempted, when all was at peace around me, and I the only unquiet thing that wandered restless in a scene so beautiful and heavenly – if I except some bat, or the frogs, whose harsh and interrupted croaking was heard only when I approached the shore – often, I say, I was tempted to plunge into the silent lake, that the waters might close over me and my calamities forever.”

— Mary Shelley

333. “We placed his remains under a cypress, the upright mountain being scooped out to receive them. And then Clara said, ‘If you wish me to live, take me from hence. There is something in this scene of transcendent beauty, in these trees, and hills and waves, that for ever whisper to me, leave thy cumbrous flesh, and make a part of us. I earnestly entreat you to take me away.”

— Mary Shelley

334. “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

335. “Intr-adevar, nimic nu ajuta mai mult la linistirea cugetului decat un tel neabatut – un punct asupra caruia sa isi poata atinti privirea ochiul sufletului.”

— Mary Shelley

336. “Sometimes the peasants, scared by this horrid apparition, informed me of his path; sometimes he himself, who feared that if I lost all trace I should despair and die, often left some mark to guide me.”

— Mary Shelley

337. “I have longed for a friend; I have sought one who would sympathise with and love me.”

— Mary Shelley

338. “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

339. “Be men, or be more than men. Be steady to your purposes and firm as a rock. This ice is not made of such stuff as your hearts may be; it is mutable and cannot withstand you if you say that it shall not.”

— Mary Shelley

340. “And to my young heart the idea of death came for the first time blended with that of joy.”

— Mary Shelley

341. “Si el estudio al cual uno se entrega tiene una tendencia a debilitar los afectos y a destruir el gusto que se tiene por esos sencillos placeres en los cuales nada debe interferir, entonces esa disciplina es con toda seguridad perjudicial, es decir, impropia de la mente humana.”

— Mary Shelley

342. “Remember that am they creature, I ought to be thy Adam, but am rather the fallen Angel.”

— Mary Shelley

343. “Embrace fond woe, or cast our cares away;.”

— Mary Shelley

344. “I feel my heart glow with an enthusiasm which elevates me to heaven, for 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

345. “But I am not so wretched as you are.”

— Mary Shelley

346. “My warm affections finding no return... were forced to run waste on inanimate objects.”

— Mary Shelley

347. “For the first time, also, I felt what the duties of a creator toward his creature were, and that i ought to render him happy before I complained of his wickedness.”

— Mary Shelley

348. “He lost no time in endeavouring to seek him out, with the hope of persuading him to begin the world again.”

— Mary Shelley

349. “None knew of their love except their own two hearts...”

— Mary Shelley

350. “Why did I live? Why, in that instant, did I not extinguish the spark of existence which you had so wantonly bestowed? I know not; despair had not yet taken possession of me; my feelings were those of rage and revenge. I could with pleasure have destroyed the cottage and its inhabitants, and have glutted myself with their shrieks and misery.”

— Mary Shelley