Quotes by Mary Shelley

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The beginning is always today.

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Man... sometimes appears as if he were the bad offspring of his ancestor, at other times it is impossible to find someone more noble and more like God.

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A gentle ass, even if he has a rough manner, certainly wants good, and undoubtedly deserves better treatment than scolding and beating.

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I wanted good and I was good. Misery turned me into a demon. Make me happy and I will be virtuous again.

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Why do people boast that they are so much more sensitive than animals? I think that makes it all the more essential. If our motives were limited to hunger, thirst and physical desires, we would almost be free, but this is how we are moved by every wind, a random word or scene, or what we think we can sense from this word.

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A person who strives for perfection must always maintain his serenity and peace of mind, he must never allow his tranquility to be disturbed by passion or fleeting desire.

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If we seek the cause of life, we must first return to death.

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Excessive grief prevents improvement, undermines health, and prevents a person from carrying out his daily tasks, and if he neglects them, no one can be a useful member of society.

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The uneducated peasant observes the elements around him and learns about their practical use. Even the most learned philosopher hardly knows more than this. Even if he succeeds in deciphering something of nature's veiled face, its many immortal features remain a wonder and a mystery.

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We are unformed creatures, only half-finished, until someone wiser, better and more valuable than us - and a good friend should be like that - helps us to make our fallible and frail nature more perfect.

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I could spend my life in comfort and luxury, but I value glory more than all the temptations that wealth presents to me.

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I am an unfortunate and lonely creature. I look around, and I have no friend, no relative on earth.

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I see happiness everywhere, and only I am irrevocably excluded from it.

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What a strange thing knowledge is! Once hooked, it clings to the mind like moss to a rock.

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To be friendless is bitter indeed, but the hearts of men, when their impartiality is not restrained by obvious self-interest, are full of brotherly love and mercy.

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Nothing is more painful to the human soul than the dead calm of inaction and certainty, which deprives it of both hope and fear.

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How much happier is the man who believes his native city to the world, than he who aspires to a greatness which his human nature does not allow!

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Nothing calms the soul like a definite goal - the point on which the soul can fix its spiritual gaze.

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A solitary creature is a wanderer by instinct, so I will be. A change of location always comes with the hope of improvement.

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I was disappointed in my hopes, but maybe someone else will succeed.

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If some great enterprise or idea should occupy me, which would bring untold benefit to mankind, I should indeed be able to live to carry it out.

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Even then, our childhood companions have a power over our souls that a later friend can hardly achieve. They know our childhood nature well, which may have changed later, but never completely disappeared, and they are the ones who can judge our actions, inferring with more or less certainty the honesty of our motives.

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I always wanted a friend. I was looking for someone who loves me and sympathizes with me. And behold, I found her on this uninhabited sea, but unfortunately only until I recognized her value, and I was about to lose her.

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Nothing causes greater pain to the human soul than sudden and radical change.

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It is good for the unfortunate person to come to terms with his fate, but for the one who is tormented by guilt, there is no such thing as peace. The pangs of remorse poison even the beauty that one can sometimes find in immeasurable pain.

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How changeable our feelings are, and how strange that even in the greatest misery we cling lovingly to life!

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I was impressed by the helplessness that one so often feels when in a nightmare one tries in vain to escape from the final danger, because one's feet are rooted in the ground.

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I long for the company of a person who can empathize with me, whose eyes can respond to my gaze.