Quotes from Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

seek not a fellow-feeling in my misery. No sympathy may I ever find. When I first sought it, it was the love of virtue, the feelings of happiness and affection with which my whole being overflowed, that I wished to be participated.15 But now, that virtue has become to me a shadow, and that happiness and affection are turned into bitter and loathing despair, in what should I seek for sympathy?

why does man boast of sensibilities superior to those apparent in the brute; it only renders them more necessary beings. 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.

shuddered to think who might be the next victim sacrificed to his insatiate revenge. And then I thought again of his words—"I will be with you on your wedding-night.

All men hate the wretched; how then must I be hated, who am miserable beyond all living things!

I read and studied the wild fancies of these writers with delight; they appeared to me treasures known to few besides myself.

Un solo acontecimiento puede alterar bruscamente el aspecto de un lugar, pero también un cúmulo de pequeñas circunstancias puede variarlo gradualmente y sin que sea posible apercibirse de ello a simple vista.

Once my fancy was soothed with dreams of virtue, of fame, and of enjoyment. Once I falsely hoped to meet with beings, who, pardoning my outward form, would love me for the excellent qualities which I was capable of bringing forth. I was nourished with high thoughts of honour and devotion. But now vice has degraded me beneath the meanest animal.

We placed his remains under a cypress, the upright mountain being scooped out to receive them. And then Clara said, 'If you wish me to live, take me from hence. There is something in this scene of transcendent beauty, in these trees, and hills and waves, that for ever whisper to me, leave thy cumbrous flesh, and make a part of us. I earnestly entreat you to take me away.

I have longed for a friend; I have sought one who would sympathise with and love me.

If I returned, it was to be sacrificed, or to see those whom I most loved die under the grasp of a dæmon whom I had myself created.

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.

Pero tenemos la obligación de esconder nuestro dolor para no aumentar el de los que nos rodean.

Our virtues are the quicksands, which show themselves at calm and low water; but let the waves arise and the winds buffet them, and the poor devil whose hope was in their durability, finds them sink from under him.

I had resolved in my own mind, that to create another like the fiend I had first made would be an act of the basest and most atrocious selfishness; and I banished from my mind every thought that could lead to a different conclusion.

The guilty are allowed, by human laws, bloody as they may be, to speak in their own defence before they are condemned. Listen to me, Frankenstein. You accuse me of murder; and yet you would, with a satisfied conscience, destroy your own creature.

I learned that there was but one means to overcome the sensation of pain, and that was death.

Of what a strange nature is knowledge! It clings to the mind when it has once seized on it like a lichen on the rock.

Perhaps during former years he had suffered from the late-discovered unworthiness of one beloved, and so was disposed to set a greater value on tried worth.

Ay! Víctor, cuando la felicidad puede adoptar la apariencia de verdad, ¿quién puede estar seguro de alcanzar alguna felicidad?

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 Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein: The 1818 Text (Penguin Classics, January 16, 2018) Originally published January 1, 1818.

Why cannot human language express human thoughts? And how is it that there is a feeling inspired by the excess of beauty, which laps the heart in a gentle but eager flame, which may inspire virtue and love, but the feeling is far too intense for expression?

but how was I terrified, when I viewed myself in a transparent pool! At first I started back, unable to believe that it was indeed I who was reflected in the mirror; and when I became fully convinced that I was in reality the monster that I am, I was filled with the bitterest sensations of despondence and mortification.

Me has dado sentimientos y pasiones, pero me has abandonado al desprecio y al asco de la humanidad.

The cup of life was poisoned forever.