Explore the most impactful and insightful quotes and sayings by Mary Shelley, and enrich your perspective with the wisdom. Share these inspiring Mary Shelley quotes pictures with your friends on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, or your personal blogs, completely free. Here are the top 238 Mary Shelley quotes for you to read and share.

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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. -- Mary Shelley
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Shore of the lake, at the distance of rather more than a league -- Mary Shelley
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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
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I grew very weary and irritable with the curate's perpetual ejaculations; -- Mary Shelley
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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
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A truce to philosophy! - Life is before me, and I rush into possession. Hope, glory, love, and blameless ambition are my guides, and my soul knows no dread. What has been, though sweet, is gone; the present is good only because it is about to change, and the to come is all my own. -- Mary Shelley
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Ignominious grave, and I the cause! A thousand times -- Mary Shelley
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It is certainly more creditable to cultivate the earth for the sustenance of man, than to be the confidant, and sometimes the accomplice, of his vices; which is the profession of a lawyer. -- Mary Shelley
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Henry deeply felt the misfortune of being debarred from a liberal education. -- Mary Shelley
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Life is obstinate and clings closest where it is most hated. -- Mary Shelley
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We never do what we wish when we wish it, and when we desire a thing earnestly, and it does arrive, that or we are changed, so that we slide from the summit of our wishes and find ourselves where we were. -- Mary Shelley
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Soon a gentle light stole over the heavens, and gave me a sensation of pleasure. I started up, and beheld a radiant form rise from among the trees.* I gazed with a kind of wonder. It moved slowly, but it enlightened my path ; and I again went out. * The moon. -- Mary Shelley
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I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel ... -- Mary Shelley
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The fallen angel becomes a malignant devil. Yet even that enemy of God and man had friends and associates in his desolation; I am alone. -- Mary Shelley
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Remember , that I am thy creature; I ought to be thy Adam; but I am rather the fallen angel, whom thou drivest from joy for no misdeed. -- Mary Shelley
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When I run over the frightful catalogue of my sins, I cannot believe that I am the same creature whose thoughts were once filled with sublime and transcendent visions of the beauty and the majesty of goodness. But it is even so; the fallen angel becomes a malignant devil. -- Mary Shelley
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It may ... be judged indecent in me to come forward on this occasion; but when I see a fellow-creature about to perish through the cowardice of her pretended friends, I wish to be allowed to speak, that I may say what I know of her character. -- Mary Shelley
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So much does suffering blunt even the coarsest sensations of men -- Mary Shelley
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I have thus endeavoured to preserve the truth of the elementary principles of human -- Mary Shelley
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How mutable are our feelings, and how strange is that clinging love we have of life even in the excess of misery! -- Mary Shelley
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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. -- Mary Shelley
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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
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There is love in me the likes of which you've never seen. There is rage in me the likes of which should never escape. If I am not satisfied int he one, I will indulge the other. -- Mary Shelley
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Her health, and even the tranquillity of her hitherto constant spirit, had been shaken by what she had gone through. -- Mary Shelley
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What is there in our nature that is for ever urging us on towards pain and misery? -- Mary Shelley
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What terrified me will terrify others; and I need only describe the spectre which had haunted my midnight pillow. -- Mary Shelley
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I had feelings of affection, and they were requited by detestation and scorn. Man! You may hate, but beware! Your hours will pass in dread and misery, and soon the bolt will fall which must ravish from you your happiness forever. -- Mary Shelley
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A sense of security, a feeling that a truce was established between the present hour and the irresistible, disastrous future imparted to me a kind of calm forgetfulness, of which the human mind is by its structure peculiarly susceptible. -- Mary Shelley
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I desire the company of a man who could sympathize with me, whose eyes would reply to mine ... gentle yet corageous, possesed, as a cultivated as well as a capacious mind, whose tastes are like my own to aprove or amend my plans. -- Mary Shelley
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The haughty princess of Austria, who became, as queen of England, the head of fashion, looked with harsh eyes on his defects, and with contempt on the affection her royal husband entertained for him. -- Mary Shelley
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Once I falsely hoped to meet the beings who, pardoning my outward form, would love me for the excellent qualities which I was capable of unfolding. -- Mary Shelley
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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 -- Mary Shelley
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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 the glimmer of two eyes that glared upon me. -- Mary Shelley
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I had rather be with you," he said, "in your solitary rambles, than with these Scotch people, whom I do not know: hasten then, my dear friend, to return, that I may again feel myself somewhat at home, which I cannot do in your absence. -- Mary Shelley
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Excellent friend! how sincerely did you love me, and endeavour to elevate my mind until it was on a level with your own. -- Mary Shelley
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My spirit will sleep in peace; or if it thinks, it will not surely think thus. Farewell. -- Mary Shelley
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Learn from my miseries, and do not seek to increase your own. -- Mary Shelley
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The name of Italy has magic in its very syllables. -- Mary Shelley
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The agonies of remorse poison the luxury there is otherwise sometimes found in the excess of grief. -- Mary Shelley
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I persuaded myself that when they should become acquainted with my admiration of their virtues, they would compassionate me, and overlook my personal deformity. Could they turn from their door one, however monstrous, who solicited their compassion and friendship? -- Mary Shelley
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A slavish bondage to parents cramps every faculty of the mind. -- Mary Shelley
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Cursed, cursed creator! Why did I live? Why, in that instant, did I not extinguish the spark of existence which you had so wantonly bestowed? -- Mary Shelley
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Listen to me, Frankenstein. You accuse me of murder, and yet you would, with a satisfied conscience, destroy your own creature. -- Mary Shelley
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I felt emotions of gentleness and pleasure, that had long appeared dead, revive within me. Half surprised by the novelty of these sensations, I allowed myself to be borne away by them, and forgetting my solitude and deformity, dared to be happy. -- Mary Shelley
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It is with considerable difficulty that I remember the original era of my being ... -- Mary Shelley
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I beheld the wretch-the miserable monster whom I had created. -- Mary Shelley
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Like one who, on a lonely road,
Doth walk in fear and dread,
And, having once turned round, walks on,
And turns no more his head;
Because he knows a frightful fiend
Doth close behind him tread. -
Coleridge's Ancient Mariner. -- Mary Shelley
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Oh! Stars and clouds and winds, ye are all about to mock me; if ye really pity me, crush sensation and memory; let me become as nought; but if not, depart, depart, and leave me in darkness. -- Mary Shelley
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I persuaded myself that I was dreaming until night should come and that I should then enjoy reality in the arms of my dearest friends. -- Mary Shelley
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This advice, although good, was totally inapplicable to my case. -- Mary Shelley
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Seek happiness in tranquility and avoid ambition even if it be only the apparently innocent one of distinguishing yourself in science and discoveries. -- Mary Shelley
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It is true, we shall be monsters, cut off from all the world; but on that account we shall be more attached to one another. -- Mary Shelley
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You seek for knowledge and wisdom, as I once did; and I ardently hope that the gratification of your wishes may not be a serpent to sting you, as mine has been. - Victor Frankenstein. -- Mary Shelley
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Accursed creator! Why did you form a monster so hideous that even you turned from me in disgust? -- Mary Shelley
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A mind of moderate capacity which closely pursues one study must infallibly arrive at great proficiency in that study. -- Mary Shelley
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Alas! I regret that I am taken from you; and, happy and beloved as I have been, is it not hard to quit you all? But these are not thoughts befitting me; I will endeavor to resign myself cheerfully to death, and will indulge a hope of meeting you in another world. -- Mary Shelley
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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. -- Mary Shelley
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The world was to me a secret which I desired to devine. -- Mary Shelley
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The very winds whispered in soothing accents, and maternal Nature bade me weep no more. -- Mary Shelley
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Men love a prop so well, that they will lean on a pointed poisoned spear; and such was he, the impostor, who, with fear of hell for his scourge, most ravenous wolf, played the driver to a credulous flock. -- Mary Shelley
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I read of men concerned in public affairs governing or massacring their species. -- Mary Shelley
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The sight of the awful and majestic in nature had indeed always the effect of solemnising my mind and causing me to forget the passing cares of life. -- Mary Shelley
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There are some beings, whom fate seems to select on whom to pour, in unmeasured portion, the vials of her wrath, and whom she bathes even to the lips in misery. -- Mary Shelley
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In my joy I thrust my hand into the live embers, but quickly drew it out with a cry of pain. How strange, I thought that the same cause should produce such opposite effects. -- Mary Shelley
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She was no longer that happy creature who in earlier youth wandered with me on the banks of the lake and talked with ecstasy of our future prospects. The first of those sorrows which are sent to wean us from the earth had visited her, and its dimming influence quenched her dearest smiles. -- Mary Shelley
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You may deem me romantic, my dear sister, but I bitterly feel the want of a friend. -- Mary Shelley
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It is well for the unfortunate to be resigned, but for the guilty there is no peace. The agonies of remorse poison the luxury there is otherwise sometimes found in indulging the excess of grief. -- Mary Shelley
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I feel exquisite pleasure in dwelling on the recollections of childhood, before misfortune had tainted my mind, and changed its bright visions of extensive usefulness into gloomy and narrow reflections upon self. -- Mary Shelley
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I leave a sad and bitter world; and if you remember me, and think of me as of one unjustly condemned, I am resigned to the fate awaiting me. -- Mary Shelley
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I felt that blank incapability of invention which is the greatest misery of authorship, when dull Nothing replies to our anxious invocations. -- Mary Shelley
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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 one, I will indulge in the other. -- Mary Shelley
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To be friendless is indeed to be unfortunate; but the hearts of men, when unprejudiced by any obvious self-interest, are full of brotherly love and charity. Rely, therefore, on your hopes. -- Mary Shelley
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For while I destroyed his hopes, I did not satisfy my own desires. They were for ever ardent and craving; still I desired love and fellowship, and I was still spurned. -- Mary Shelley
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It was my temper to avoid a crowd, and to attach myself fervently to a few. -- Mary Shelley
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I saw no cause for their unhappiness, but I was deeply affected by it. If such lovely creatures were miserable, it was less strange that I, an imperfect and solitary being, should be wretched. -- Mary Shelley
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If our impulses were confined to hunger, thirst, and desire, we might be nearly free; but now we are moved by every wind that blows and a chance word or scene that that word may convey to us. -- Mary Shelley
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After days and nights of incredible labour and fatigue, I succeeded in discovering the cause of generation and life; nay, more, I became myself capable of bestowing animation upon lifeless matter. The -- Mary Shelley
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God, in pity, made man beautiful and alluring, after his own image; but my form is a filthy type of yours, more horrid even from the very resemblance. Satan had his companions, fellow devils, to admire and encourage him, but I am solitary and abhorred. -- Mary Shelley
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Do not despair. To be friendless is indeed to be unfortunate, but the hearts of men, when unprejudiced by any obvious self-interest, are full of brotherly love and charity. -- Mary Shelley
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My dreams were at once more fantastic and agreeable than my writings. -- Mary Shelley
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He was soon borne away by the waves and lost in darkness and distance. -- Mary Shelley
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I see by your eagerness, and the wonder and hope which your eyes express, my friend, that you expect to be in formed of the secret with which I am acquainted. That cannot be. -- Mary Shelley
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The world to me was a secret, which I desired to discover; to her it was a vacancy, which she sought to people with imaginations of her own. -- Mary Shelley
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If I see but one smile on your lips when we meet, occasioned by this or any other exertion of mine, I shall need no other happiness. -- Mary Shelley
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My education was neglected, yet I was passionately fond of reading. -- Mary Shelley
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I cannot tell you how I loathe talking about myself. -- Mary Shelley
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I spoke of my desire of finding a friend, of my thirst for a more intimate sympathy with a fellow mind than had ever fallen to my lot, and expressed my conviction that a man could boast of little happiness who did not enjoy this blessing. -- Mary Shelley
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What did this mean? Who was I? What was I? Whence did I come? What was my destination? -- Mary Shelley
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There was a considerable difference between the ages of my parents, but this circumstance seemed to unite them only closer in bonds of devoted affection. -- Mary Shelley
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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 circles no grief or folly ventures. -- Mary Shelley
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The raising of ghosts or devils was a promise liberally accorded by my favourite authors, -- Mary Shelley
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For nothing contributes so much to tranquillize the mind as a steady purpose - a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye. -- Mary Shelley
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She seemed, poor woman, to imagine that the French and the Martians might prove very similar. -- Mary Shelley
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I imagined that they would be disgusted, until, by my gentle demeanor and conciliating words, I should first win their favour, and afterwards their love. -- Mary Shelley
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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
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If you will comply with my conditions, I will leave them and you at peace; but if you refuse, I will glut the maw of death, until it be satiated with the blood of your remaining friends. -- Mary Shelley
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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. -- Mary Shelley
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When happy, inanimate nature had the power of bestowing on me the most delightful sensations. -- Mary Shelley
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My vices are the children of a forced solitude that I abhor, and my virtues will necessarily arise when I live in communion with an equal. -- Mary Shelley
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My courage and my resolution is firm; but my hopes fluctuate, and my spirits are often depressed. -- Mary Shelley
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My own mind began to grow, watchful with anxoius thoughts. -- Mary Shelley
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I saw- with shut eyes, but acute mental vision- I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together ... Frightful must it be, for supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavor to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world. -- Mary Shelley
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In the midst of poverty and want, Felix carried with pleasure to his sister the first little white flower that peeped out from beneath the snowy ground. -- Mary Shelley
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I contempleted the lake; the waters were placid, all around was calm and the snowy mountains ... the calm and heavenly scene restored me and I continued my journey toward Geneva. -- Mary Shelley
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The companions of our childhood always possess a certain power over our minds which hardly any later friend can obtain. -- Mary Shelley
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It is well. I go; but remember, I shall be with you on your wedding-night. -- Mary Shelley
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I could not understand why men who knew all about good and evil could hate and kill each other. -- Mary Shelley
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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. -- Mary Shelley
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Firm; but my hopes fluctuate, and my spirits are often -- Mary Shelley
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I became myself capable of bestowing animation upon lifeless matter. -- Mary Shelley
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Increase of knowledge only discovered to me more clearly what a wretched outcast I was. I cherished hope, it is true, but it vanished when I beheld my person reflected in water or my shadow in the moonshine, even as that frail image and that inconstant shade. -- Mary Shelley
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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. -- Mary Shelley
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The whole series of my life appeared to me as a dream; I sometimes doubted if indeed it were all true, for it never presented itself to my mind with the force of reality. -- Mary Shelley
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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 ... -- Mary Shelley
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There is something at work in my soul, which I do not understand. -- Mary Shelley
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Why does man boast of sensibilities superior to those apparent in the brute; it only renders them more necessary beings. -- Mary Shelley
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When you speak of new ties and fresh affections, think you that any can replace those who are gone? -- Mary Shelley
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I was new to sorrow, but it did not the less alarm me. -- Mary Shelley
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You accuse me of murder; and yet you would, with a satisfied conscience, destroy your own creature. Oh, Praise the eternal justice of man! -- Mary Shelley
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What is there so fearful as the expectation of evil tidings delayed? ... Misery is a more welcome visitant when she comes in her darkest guise and wraps us in perpetual black, for then the heart no longer sickens with disappointed hope.
- The Evil Eye -- Mary Shelley
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Will revenge my injuries; if I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear, and chiefly towards you my arch-enemy, because my creator, do I swear -- Mary Shelley
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Solitude was my only consolation - deep, dark, deathlike solitude. -- Mary Shelley
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I saw how the fine form of man was degraded and wasted; I beheld the corruption of death succeed to the blooming cheek of life; I saw how the worm inherited the wonders of the eye and brain. -- Mary Shelley
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He is an Englishman, and in the midst of national and professional prejudices, unsoftened by cultivation, retains some of the noblest endowments of humanity. -- Mary Shelley
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I spread the whole earth out as a map before me. On no one spot of its surface could I put my finger and say, here is safety. -- Mary Shelley
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I heard of the discovery of the American hemisphere, and wept with Safie over the hapless fate of its original inhabitants. -- Mary Shelley
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At these moments I took refuge in the most perfect solitude. I passed whole days on the lake alone in a little boat, watching the clouds, and listening to the rippling of the waves, silent and listless. -- Mary Shelley
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Yet you, my creator, detest and spurn me, thy creature, to whom thou art bound by ties only dissoluble by the annhilation of one of us. -- Mary Shelley
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One as deformed and horrible as myself, could not deny herself to me. My companion must be of the same species, and have the same defects ... with whom I can live in the interchange of those sympathies necessary for my being ... -- Mary Shelley
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Teach him to think for himself? Oh, my God, teach him rather to think like other people! -- Mary Shelley
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I heard of the slothful Asiatics, of the stupendous genius and mental activity of the Grecians, of the wars and wonderful virtue of the early Romans - of their subsequent degenerating - of the decline of that mighty empire, of chivalry, Christianity, and kings. -- Mary Shelley
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When one creature is murdered, another is immediately deprived of life in a slow torturing manner; then the executioners, their hands yet reeking with the blood of innocence, believe that they have done a great deed. -- Mary Shelley
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Oh, come to me in dreams, my love!
I will not ask a dearer bliss;
Come with the starry beams, my love,
And press mine eyelids with thy kiss. -- Mary Shelley
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Beware; for I am fearless, and therefore powerful. -- Mary Shelley
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Continue for the present to write to me by every opportunity: I may receive your letters on some occasions when I need them most to support my spirits. -- Mary Shelley
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If the study to which you apply yourself has a tendency to weaken your affections and to destroy your taste for those simple pleasures in which no alloy can possibly mix, then that study is certainly unlawful, that is to say, not befitting the human mind. -- Mary Shelley
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The guilty are allowed, by human laws, bloody as they are, to speak in their own defence before they are condemned. -- Mary Shelley
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Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change. -- Mary Shelley
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Theses bleak skies I hail, for they are kinder to me than ur fellow creatures . -- Mary Shelley
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I seemed to have lost all soul or sensation but for this one pursuit. -- Mary Shelley
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Life, although it may only be an accumulation of anguish, is dear to me, and I will defend it. -- Mary Shelley
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But I believed myself totally unfitted for the company of strangers. Such were my reflections as I commenced my journey; but as I proceeded, my spirits and hopes rose. -- Mary Shelley
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My heart, which was before sorrowful, now swelled with something like joy; I exclaimed, Wandering spirits, if indeed ye wander, and do not rest in your narrow beds, allow me this faint happiness, or take me, as your companion, away from the joys of life. -- Mary Shelley
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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. -- Mary Shelley
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How dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world, than he who aspires to be greater than his nature will allow. -- Mary Shelley
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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 protectors (for so I loved, in an innocent, half painful self-deceit, to call them). -- Mary Shelley
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Nothing is so precious to a woman's heart as the glory and excellence of him she loves -- Mary Shelley
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The labours of men of genius, however erroneously directed, scarcely ever fail in ultimately turning to the solid advantage of mankind. -- Mary Shelley
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Sir Isaac Newton is said to have avowed that he felt like a child picking up shells beside the great and unexplored ocean of truth. -- Mary Shelley
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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 abhorrent to myself. -- Mary Shelley
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I feel a cold northern breeze play upon my cheeks, which braces my nerves and fills me with delight. -- Mary Shelley
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In other studies you go as far as other have gone before you, and there is nothing more to know; but in a scientific pursuit there is continual food for discovery and wonder. -- Mary Shelley
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I can hardly describe to you the effect of these books. They produced in me an infinity of new images and feelings that sometimes raised me to ecstasy, but more frequently sunk me into the lowest dejection. -- Mary Shelley
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And I foresaw obscurely that I was destined to become the most wretched of human beings. -- Mary Shelley
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But now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart -- Mary Shelley
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Devil, cease; and do not poison the air with these sounds of malice. I have declared my resolution to you, and I am no coward to bend beneath words. Leave me; I am inexorable. -- Mary Shelley
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Strange and harrowing must be his story; frightful the storm which embraced the gallant vessel on its course, and wrecked it
thus! -- Mary Shelley
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Was man, indeed, at once so powerful, so virtuous, and magnificent, yet so viscious and base? He appeared at one time a mere scion of evil principle and at another as all that can be conceived as noble and godlike. -- Mary Shelley
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Who could be interested in the fate of a murderer, but the hangman who would gain his fee? -- Mary Shelley
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No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks. -- Mary Shelley
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It is true that I have thought more and that my daydreams are more extended and magnificent, but they want (as the painters call it) KEEPING; and I greatly need a friend who would have sense enough not to despise me as romantic, and affection enough for me to endeavour to regulate my mind. -- Mary Shelley
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I am not a person of opinions because I feel the counter arguments too strongly. -- Mary Shelley
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His landlady came to the door, loosely wrapped in dressing gown and shawl; her husband followed ejaculating. -- Mary Shelley
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These are my enticements, and they are sufficent to conquer all fear and danger or death ... with the induction of the joy of a child feels when embarks a little boat. -- Mary Shelley
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I felt sensations of a peculiar and overpowering nature: they were a mixture of pain and pleasure, such as I had never before experienced, either from hunger or cold, warmth or food; and I withdrew from the window, unable to bear these emotions. -- Mary Shelley
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What may not be expected in a country of eternal light -- Mary Shelley
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Who shall conceive the horrors of my secret toil as I dabbled among the unhallowed damps of the grave or tortured the living animal to animate the lifeless clay? -- Mary Shelley
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A man would make but a very sorry chemist if he attended to that department of human knowledge alone. -- Mary Shelley
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Life and death appeared to me ideal bounds, which I should first break through, and pour a torrent of light into our dark world. -- Mary Shelley
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I trembled, and my heart failed within me; when, on looking up, I saw, by the light of the moon, the daemon at the casement. -- Mary Shelley
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To bestow on your fellow men is a Godlike attribute
So indeed it is and as such not one fit for mortality;
the giver, like Adam and Prometheus, must pay the penalty of rising above his nature by being the martyr of his own excellence. -- Mary Shelley
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Elegance is inferior to virtue. -- Mary Shelley
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I shall commit my thoughts to paper, it is true; but that is a poor medium for the communication of feeling. I desire the company of a man who could sympathize with me, whose eyes would reply to mine. -- Mary Shelley
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But now misery has come home, and men appear to me as monsters thirsting for each other's blood. -- Mary Shelley
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Satan has his companions, fellow-devils, to admire and encourage him; but I am solitary and detested. -- Mary Shelley
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My dreams were therefore undisturbed by reality; and I entered with the greatest diligence into the search of the philosopher's stone and the elixir of life. But the latter obtained my undivided attention: wealth was -- Mary Shelley
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Devil, do you dare approach me? and do you not fear the fierce vengeance of my arm wreaked on your miserable head? -- Mary Shelley
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A child fairer than a pictured cherub - a creature who seemed to shed radiance from her looks and whose form and motions were lighter than the chamois of the hills. -- Mary Shelley
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We know not what all this wide world means; its strange mixture of good and evil. But we have been placed here and bid live and hope. I know not what we are to hope; but there is some good beyond us that we must seek; and that is our earthly task. If -- Mary Shelley
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After so much time spent in painful labor, to arrive at once at the summit of my desires was the most gratifying consummation of my toils. -- Mary Shelley
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One man's life or death were but a small price to pay for the acquirement of the knowledge which I sought, for the dominion I should acquire and transmit over the elemental foes of our race. -- Mary Shelley
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By the sacred earth on which I kneel, by the shades that wander near me, by the deep and eternal grief that I feel, I swear; and by thee, O Night, and the spirits that preside over thee, to pursue the demon who caused this misery, until he or I shall perish in mortal conflict. -- Mary Shelley
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Man," I cried, "how ignorant art thou in thy pride of wisdom! -- Mary Shelley
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Nothing contributes so much to tranquilize the mind as a steady purpose -- Mary Shelley
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He is dead who called me into being, and when I shall be no more the very remembrance of us both will speedily vanish. -- Mary Shelley
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A king is always a king - and a woman always a woman: his authority and her sex ever stand between them and rational converse. -- Mary Shelley
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He seems to feel his own worth, and the greatness of his fall. -- Mary Shelley
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Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void but out of chaos. -- Mary Shelley
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You throw a torch into a pile of buildings, and when they are consumed, you sit among the ruins and lament the fall. -- Mary Shelley
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A man is blind to a thousand minute circumstances, which call forth a woman's sedulous attention. -- Mary Shelley
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But her's was the misery of innocence, which, like a cloud that passes over the fair moon, for a while hides, but cannot tarnish its brightness. -- Mary Shelley
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The spirit of elder days found a dwelling here, and we delighted to trace its footsteps. -- Mary Shelley
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You, my creator, abhor me; what hope can I gather from your fellow-creatures, who owe me nothing? -- Mary Shelley
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The different accidents of life are not so changeable as the feelings of human nature. -- Mary Shelley
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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
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Her countenance was all expression; her eyes were not dark but impenetrably deep; you seemed to discover space after space in their intellectual glance. -- Mary Shelley
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With how many things are we on the brink of becoming acquainted, if cowardice or carelessness did not restrain our inquiries. -- Mary Shelley
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I am alone and miserable. Only someone as ugly as I am could love me. -- Mary Shelley
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I no longer see the world and its works as they before appeared to me. -- Mary Shelley
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I will tell my story, and my reader shall judge for me. I will tell my story, and so contrive to pass some few hours of a long eternity, become so worrisome to me. -- Mary Shelley
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There was always scope for fear,so long as anything I love remained behind -- Mary Shelley
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Ah! it is well for the unfortunate to be resigned, but for the guilty there is no peace. -- Mary Shelley
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Enter the house of mourning, my friend, but with kindness and affection for those who love you, and not with hatred for your enemies. -- Mary Shelley
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Hall satiate my ardent curiosity with the sight of a part of the world never before visited, and may tread a land never before imprinted by the foot of man -- Mary Shelley
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It is a farce to call any being virtuous whose virtues do not result from the exercise of its own reason. -- Mary Shelley
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These reflections have dispelled the agitation with which I began my letter, and I feel my heart glow with an enthusiasm which elevates me to heaven, for nothing contributes so much to tranquillize the mind as a steady purpose
a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye. This -- Mary Shelley
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We cannot without depraving our minds endeavour to please a lover or husband but in proportion as he pleases us. -- Mary Shelley
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Voyage to render their seeming eccentricities consistent forever. I shall satiate my ardent curiosity with the sight of a part of the world never before visited, and may tread a land never before imprinted by the foot of ma -- Mary Shelley
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I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend. Make me happy, and I shall again be virtuous. -- Mary Shelley
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I need to say that we were strangers to any species of disunion or dispute. Harmony was the soul of our companionship, and the diversity and contrast that subsisted in our characters drew us nearer together. -- Mary Shelley
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I, a miserable wretch, haunted by a curse that shut up every avenue to enjoyment. -- Mary Shelley
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Unhappy man! Do you share my maddness? Have you drunk also of the intoxicating draught? Hear me; let me reveal my tale, and you will dash the cup from your lips! -- Mary Shelley
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When falsehood can look so like the truth, who can assure themselves of certain happiness? -- Mary Shelley
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I became the victim of ingratitude and cold coquetry - then I desponded, and imagined that my discontent gave me a right to hate the world. I -- Mary Shelley
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Do I not deserve to accomplish some great purpose. My life might have passed in ease and luxury; but I preferred glory to every enticement that wealth placed in my path. -- Mary Shelley
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He strove to shelter her, as a fair exotic is sheltered by the gardener, from every rougher wind, and to surround her with all that could tend to excite pleasurable emotion in her soft and benevolent mind. -- Mary Shelley
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The agony of my feelings allowed me no respite; no incident occurred from which my rage and misery could not extract its food. -- Mary Shelley
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Perfect happiness is an attribute of angels; and those who have it, appear angelic -- Mary Shelley
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Natural philosophy is the genius that has regulated my fate. -- Mary Shelley
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I am satisfied: miserable wretch! you have determined to live, and I am satisfied. -- Mary Shelley
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Learn from me, if not by my precepts, at least by my example, how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge -- Mary Shelley
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But soon, I shall die, and what I now feel be no longer felt. Soon these burning miseries will be extinct. -- Mary Shelley
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He may be innocent of the murder, but he has certainly a bad conscience. -- Mary Shelley
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Panegyric upon modern chemistry, the terms of which I shall never -- Mary Shelley
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What a glorious creature must he have been in the day of his prosperity, when he is thus noble and godlike in ruin. -- Mary Shelley
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Polluted by crimes, and torn by the bitterest remorse, where can I find rest but in death? -- Mary Shelley
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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. -- Mary Shelley
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Then reflected, and the thought made me shiver, that the creature whom I had left in my apartment might still be there, alive, and walking about. -- Mary Shelley
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It is decided as you may have expected; all judges had rather that ten innocent should suffer, than that one guilty should escape. -- Mary Shelley
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I can offer you no consolation, my friend," said he; "your disaster is irreparable. What do you intend to do? -- Mary Shelley
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I remembered Adam's supplication to his Creator. But where was mine? He had abandoned me, and in the bitterness of my heart I cursed him. -- Mary Shelley
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I required kindness and sympathy, but I did not believe myself utterly unworthy of it. -- Mary Shelley
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Everything must have a beginning, to speak in Sanchean phrase; and that beginning must be linked to something that went before. The Hindus give the world an elephant to support it, but they make the elephant stand upon a tortoise. -- Mary Shelley
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Nothing is more painful to the human mind than, after the feelings have been worked up by a quick succession of events, the dead calmness of inaction and certainty which follows and deprives the soul both of hope and fear. -- Mary Shelley
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The blood flowed freely in my veins, but a weight of despair and remorse pressed on my heart, which nothing could remove. -- Mary Shelley
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I confess that neither the structure of the languages, nor the code of governments, nor the politics of various states possessed attractions for me. It was the secrets of heaven and earth that I desired to learn. -- Mary Shelley
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I became the same happy creature who, a few years ago, loved and beloved by all, had no sorrow or care. -- Mary Shelley
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What can stop the determined heart and resolved will of man? -- Mary Shelley