Quotes · verified word for word in the text
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley quotes
10 quotes from 1 of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s books on this site, book by book. Each quote is copied exactly from the book’s text in this site’s reader (the Project Gutenberg e-text named under each book) and links to its passage; when this page was built, every quote was checked word for word against that text. Quotes we could not find in a book we host are not listed.
Frankenstein
Learn from me, if not by my precepts, at least by my example, 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 become greater than his nature will allow.
I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend. Make me happy, and I shall again be virtuous.
— Spoken by a character · Chapter 10
Beware, for I am fearless and therefore powerful.
— Spoken by a character · Chapter 20
I am malicious because I am miserable.
— Spoken by a character · Chapter 17
Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change.
Life, although it may only be an accumulation of anguish, is dear to me, and I will defend it.
— Spoken by a character · Chapter 10
I 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 inextinguishable hatred.
— Spoken by a character · Chapter 17
I am alone and miserable; man will not associate with me; but one as deformed and horrible as myself would not deny herself to me.
— Spoken by a character · Chapter 16
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.
— Spoken by a character · Chapter 17
The world was to me a secret which I desired to divine.