Quotes by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

“Ah! it is well for the unfortunate to be resigned, but for the guilty there is no peace.”

“There are some souls, bright and precious, which, like gold and silver, may be subdued by the fiery trial, and yield to new moulds; but there are others, pure and solid as the diamond, which may be...”

“Alas! he is cold, he cannot answer me.”

“We are all each of us riddles, when unknown one to the other. The plain map of human powers and purposes, helps us not at all to thread the labyrinth each individual presents in his involution of f...”

“Was man, indeed, at once so powerful, so virtuous and magnificent, yet so vicious and base? He appeared at one time a mere scion of the evil principle and at another as all that can be conceived of...”

“I also became a poet, and for one year lived in a Paradise of my own creation; I imagined that I also might obtain a niche in the temple where the names of Homer and Shakespeare are consecrated.”

“I looked upon the sea, it was to be my grave”

“These wonderful narrations inspired me with strange feelings. Was man, indeed, at once so powerful, so virtuous and magnificent, yet so vicious and base? He appeared at one time a mere scion of the...”

“allow me now to return to the cottagers, whose story excited in me such various feelings of indignation, delight, and wonder, but which all terminated in additional love and reverence for my protec...”

“All men hate the wretched; how, then, must I be hated, who am miserable beyond all living things! Yet you, my creator, detest and spurn me, thy creature, to whom thou art bound by ties only dissolu...”

“The cup of life was poisoned forever, and although the sun shone upon me, as upon the happy and gay of heart, I saw around me nothing but a dense and frightful darkness, penetrated by no light but ...”

“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.”

“The beginning is always today.”

“Even where the affections are not strongly moved by any superior excellence the companions of our childhood always possess a certain power over our minds which hardly any later friend can obtain.”

“I do not wish women to have power over men but over themselves.”

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

“My imagination, unbidden, possessed and guided me, gifting the successive images that arose in my mind with a vivdness far beyond the usual bounds of reverie....”

“I seemed to have lost all soul or sensation but for this one pursuit.”

“I wished, as it were, to procrastinate all that related to my feelings of affection until the great object, which swallowed up every habit of my nature, should be completed.”

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