Mary Shelley quotes

Mary Shelley was an English novelist best known for writing "Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus." Her work laid the foundation for science fiction and explores themes of creation and responsibility. She remains an influential figure in literature and continues to inspire readers and writers around the world. Here are 113 of her quotes:

My dreams were all my own; I accounted for them to nobody; they were my refuge when annoyed - my dearest pleasure when free. (Mary Shelley)
What terrified me will terrify others; and I need only describe the spectre which had haunted my midnight pillow. View quote
Mary Shelley
Nothing contributes so much to tranquilize the mind as a steady purpose - a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye. View quote
Mary Shelley
Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of voice, but out of chaos. View quote
Mary Shelley
There is something at work in my soul which I do not understand. I am practically industrious - painstaking, a workman to execute with perseverance and labour - but besides this there is a love for the marvellous, a belief in the marvellous, intertwined in all my projects, which hurries me out of the common pathways of men, even to the wild sea and unvisited regions I am about to explore. View quote
Mary Shelley
Beware; for I am fearless, and therefore powerful. View quote
Mary Shelley
If I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear! View quote
Mary Shelley
Life, although it may only be an accumulation of anguish, is dear to me, and I will defend it. View quote
Mary Shelley
My heart was fashioned to be susceptible of love and sympathy, and when wrenched by misery to vice and hatred, it did not endure the violence of the change without torture such as you cannot even imagine. View quote
Mary Shelley
At the age of twenty six I am in the condition of an aged person - all my old friends are gone ... & my heart fails when I think by how few ties I hold to the world.... View quote
Mary Shelley
We are unfashioned creatures, but half made up, if one wiser, better, dearer than ourselves - such a friend ought to be - do not lend his aid to perfectionate our weak and faulty natures. (Mary Shelley)
So much has been done, exclaimed the soul of Frankenstein - more, far more, will I achieve; treading in the steps already marked, I will pioneer a new way, explore unknown powers, and unfold to the world the deepest mysteries of creation. View quote
Mary Shelley
All judges had rather that ten innocent should suffer than that one guilty should escape. View quote
Mary Shelley
Live, and be happy, and make others so. View quote
Mary Shelley
My person was hideous and my stature gigantic. What did this mean? Who was I? What was I? Whence did I come? What was my destination? These questions continually recurred, but I was unable to solve them. View quote
Mary Shelley
The very winds whispered in soothing accents, and maternal Nature bade me weep no more. View quote
Mary Shelley
Life and death appeared to me ideal bounds, which I should first break through, and pour a torrent of light into our dark world. View quote
Mary Shelley
I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel... View quote
Mary Shelley
Of what a strange nature is knowledge! It clings to a mind when it has once seized on it like a lichen on a rock." - Frankenstein p115. View quote
Mary Shelley
Life is obstinate and clings closest where it is most hated. View quote
Mary Shelley
My dreams were at once more fantastic and agreeable than my writings. (Mary Shelley)
The beginning is always today. View quote
Mary Shelley
Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change. View quote
Mary Shelley
I do know that for the sympathy of one living being, I would make peace with all. I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine and rage the likes of which you would not believe. If I cannot satisfy the one, I will indulge the other. View quote
Mary Shelley
Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void, but out of chaos; the materials must, in the first place, be afforded: it can give form to dark, shapeless substances, but cannot bring into being the substance itself. In all matters of discovery and invention, even of those that appertain to the imagination, we are continually reminded of the story of Columbus and his egg. Invention consists in the capacity of seizing on the capabilities of a subject, and in the power of moulding and fashioning ideas suggested to it. View quote
Mary Shelley