Quotes by Mary Shelley

• The agony of my feelings allowed me no respite; no incident occurred from which my rage and misery could not extract its food.
• The very winds whispered in soothing accents, and maternal Nature bade me weep no more.
• My dreams were all my own; I accounted for them to nobody; they were my refuge when annoyed - my dearest pleasure when free.
• My dreams were at once more fantastic and agreeable than my writings.
• Nothing contributes so much to tranquilize the mind as a steady purpose - a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye.
• Teach him to think for himself? Oh, my God, teach him rather to think like other people!
• What terrified me will terrify others; and I need only describe the spectre which had haunted my midnight pillow.
• Elegance is inferior to virtue.
• A king is always a king - and a woman always a woman: his authority and her sex ever stand between them and rational converse.
• A slavish bondage to parents cramps every faculty of the mind.
• And now, once again, I bid my hideous progeny go forth and prosper. I have an affection for it, for it was the offspring of happy days, when death and grief were but words, which found no true echo in my heart.
• The same energy of character which renders a man a daring villain would have rendered him useful in society, had that society been well organized.
• But I am a blasted tree; the bolt has entered my soul; and I felt then that I should survive to exhibit what I shall soon cease to be - a miserable spectacle of wrecked humanity, pitiable to others and intolerable to myself.
• Every political good carried to the extreme must be productive of evil.
• I am very averse to bringing myself forward in print, but as my account will only appear as an appendage to a former production, and as it will be confined to such topics as have connection with my authorship alone, I can hardly accuse myself of a personal intrusion.
• Life and death appeared to me ideal bounds, which I should first break through, and pour a torrent of light into our dark world.
• Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of voice, but out of chaos.
• It is a farce to call any being virtuous whose virtues do not result from the exercise of it's own reason.
• It is hardly surprising that women concentrate on the way they look instead of what is in their minds since not much has been put in their minds to begin with.
• It is justice, not charity, that is wanting in the world.
• I do not wish women to have power over men; but over themselves.
• Embrace the chaos within you, for it is the source of your greatest creativity.
• Dare to dream boldly, for it is in the realm of the audacious that greatness is found.
• Embrace the chaos within you, for out of great disorder comes great creativity.
• The beginning is always today
• In life, nothing is certain but change.