Mary Shelley

What terrified me will terrify others; and I need only describe the spectre which had haunted my midnight pillow.

I owned but one law, it was that of the strongest, and my greatest deed of virtue was never to submit.

Are two old fools, and shall be more at peace under ground than above it.

Yet some feelings, unallied to the dross of human nature, beat even in these rugged bosoms.

Truly disappointment is the guardian deity of human life; she sits at the threshold of unborn time, and marshals the events as they come forth.

Cincolo was a brave man; he had often been foremost in a perilous assault; but the most courageous among us sometimes feel our hearts fail within us at the dread of unknown and fated danger.

What can stop the determined heart and resolved will of man?

Still do I feel her graceful form press against my full-fraught heart⁠—still does sight, and pulse, and breath sicken and fail, at the remembrance of that first kiss.

A few minutes before she had been a young and thoughtless girl, docile as a child, and as unsuspecting; now she felt as if she had suddenly grown old in wisdom, and that the experience of years had been gained in that of a few seconds.

Thus strangely are our souls constructed, and by such slight ligaments are we bound to prosperity or ruin.

Happiness is in its highest degree the sister of goodness.

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.

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.

Debasement of character is the certain follower of such pursuits.

Why is the mind of man so apt to be swayed by contraries? why does the imagination forever paint the impossible in glittering tints, and the hearts of wayward mortals cling, with the greatest tenacity, to what, eel-like, is bent on escaping from their grasp?

No father could claim the gratitude of his child so completely as I should deserve theirs.

Take the colours and odour from the rose, change the sweet nutriment of mother’s milk to gall and poison; as easily might you wean Perdita from love.

For a moment Louis seemed seeking for a word, as a man, meaning to stab, may fumble for his dagger’s hilt, unable in his agitation to grasp his weapon.

The different accidents of life are not so changeable as the feelings of human nature.

Delight awoke in every heart, delight and exultation; for there was peace through all the world; the temple of Universal Janus was shut, and man died not that year by the hand of man.