The 80 best phrases and thoughts of Mary Shelley
Maria Godwin, who adopted the surname Shelley upon marriage, was a British playwright and storyteller born in 1797.
Known worldwide for being the author of the great novel Frankenstein, she also wrote other great works such as Mathilda or The Last Man (novel from which there was a film called "I am Legend", starring the also famous actor Will Smith).
Mary Shelley is perhaps one of the most widely read British authors of all time. and her novels have been able to captivate several generations of readers. The life of this novelist was also very interesting, being full of trips, infidelities and tortuous situations.
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Great famous phrases from Mary Shelley, author of 'Frankenstein'
Surely you all know this author or have read some of her works, that is why We wanted to pay a small tribute to this pioneer of the 19th century Gothic novel.
1. The fallen angel turns into an evil demon. Yet even the enemy of God and man enjoyed the company of friends and fellow men in his desolation. I, on the other hand, am completely alone.
In the novel Frankenstein, its protagonist is forced to live in complete solitude.
2. Who can conceive the horrors of my covert task, rummaging through the damp darkness of graves or tormenting some living animal to try to animate the lifeless mud? Now my limbs tremble just remembering it; then an irresistible and almost frantic impulse would spur me on.
As we can see from this Shelley quote, she is a master of gothic writing and grim descriptions.
3. Nothing contributes to calm the mind like a firm purpose, a point on which the soul can fix its intellectual eyes.
When we are totally determined to carry out a task, sooner or later, we will be able to carry it out.
4. We are bound by tenuous ties to prosperity or ruin.
Sometimes it can give us the feeling that the destiny we will live is already set in advance.
5. Serenely seek happiness and avoid ambition, even if it is apparently as harmless as the one pursued by the path of science.
The search for happiness is something that many of us have in common and both Shelley and her characters were also looking for their own future.
6. How strange is the nature of knowledge! It clings to the mind like moss to a rock.
Knowledge within its scope is something that all scientists want to achieve, doing everything in their power for it.
7. The wolf dressed in sheep's clothing and the flock consented to the deception.
Sometimes we ourselves must do our part to be deceived, numerous deceptions and scams of all kinds need the collaboration of the victim to work.
8. The contemplation of the grandeur of nature has always given nobility to my thoughts, making me forget about daily worries.
Nature is wonderful, it can also allow us to achieve some mental and spiritual peace.
9. I swear to you that I would have preferred to remain forever in the dark. Rather than discover the ingratitude and depravity of a person so dear to me.
Ignorance can be a gift seen in the right way, it allows us to be happy in our own perception.
10. I don't want women to have more power than men, but more power over themselves.
This writer was a staunch defender of the feminist movement of the time and women's rights.
11. However, I have a great need that until now I have not been able to satisfy; and that now I feel like a regrettable failure. I don't have any friends here.
True friends are very rare and difficult to find, we must not lose them under any circumstances.
12. I know that you seek knowledge and wisdom, as I once did; and I earnestly hope that the satisfaction of your desires will not turn out to be a snake that bites you, as it has happened in my case.
The desire for knowledge can lead us to discover something that is counterproductive, such as An example happened to Madame Curie who died from having received too much radiation during her experiments.
13. Why shouldn't I continue on these indomitable and at the same time submissive waves?
Life can take us down paths we never imagined.
14. How is it possible to contemplate such a noble being destroyed by pain without experiencing deep sorrow?
Experiments with living beings can be very unpleasant, they are not usually suitable for sensitive stomachs.
15. I love life, despite the fact that it is nothing more than an accumulation of anguish, and I will defend it.
All of us without exception love life, even if it is often a great accumulation of misfortunes.
16. Like Adam, I seemed to have no ties to other beings; but his condition was very different from mine in all other respects.
Frankenstein was in his own way unique to him and the first of his kind, a being created out of nothing through science.
17. I, like the archdemon, carried hell in my bowels; and, finding no one who understood me, he wanted to uproot the trees, sow chaos and destruction around me, and then sit back and enjoy the destruction.
Who has not felt anger at some time? Knowing how to control our emotions is something basic that we all exercise from a young age.
18. Remorse nullified any hope. He was the author of irreparable evils, and he lived in constant terror that the monster he had created would commit another new evil.
The creator of the so-called Frankenstein's Monster, felt guilty for the evil that he had brought into the world.
19. If our instincts were limited to hunger, thirst and desire, we would be almost free. But we are moved by each wind that blows, each random word, each image that the same word evokes in us.
Our emotions can be very strong within us and make us carry out actions of all kinds.
20. However, how many things are we about to discover if cowardice and carelessness did not hinder our curiosity!
Curiosity is what has led human beings to develop great scientific advances of all kinds. type, but it can also be a positive or negative quality because they already say: curiosity killed the cat.
21. Whoever has not experienced the seduction that science exerts on a person will never understand its tyranny.
Science is a discipline that can absorb a person to a great extent, since quenching our thirst for knowledge can be something complicated to do.
22. But where were my friends and family? I had not had a father to take care of my childhood, nor a mother to bless me with her smiles and caresses; and if I had them, all my past life was nothing but darkness, a blind emptiness that could not distinguish anything.
Our memories are a fundamental part of us, without them we stop being the person we are.
23. To approach perfection, a man should always maintain calm and tranquility of spirit, never allowing it to be disturbed by a momentary passion or desire.
Keeping calm in difficult moments is something that not all of us know how to do.
24. From God's hands a perfect, prosperous and happy creature had come out, protected by the special care of his Creator; he had been allowed to converse with beings of a higher nature and to acquire their knowledge from them; instead I was miserable, helpless and alone.
In this writer's novel, her famous creature felt poor and helpless in the world around her.
25. But we have an obligation to hide our pain so as not to increase that of those around us.
We must know when to show our emotions and when not to, in this way we can relate much better in society.
26. Only from you could I expect help, although no other feeling aroused me than that of hatred.
Sometimes we know that our only chance to be victorious lies in those people we hate so much.
27. I, on the other hand, carried a hell inside of me, and no one could ever rip it out.
Certain emotions, such as anger or rage, can consume us from within.
28. Be careful, because I am not afraid and that makes me powerful.
Fear blocks and paralyzes us, if we don't have it we can act much more precisely.
29. Why should I respect the one who despises me?
In order for society to maintain order, we must be able to respect each other, even if the other person is not to our liking.
30. Any normally gifted intelligence that dedicates itself with interest to a certain area undoubtedly manages to dominate it with some depth.
Even the so-called gifted are only prodigious within a specific area.
31. War is the game of the statesman, the joy of the priest, the mockery of the lawyer, and the profession of the mercenary assassin.
All human beings are made to carry out a certain task, it depends on us what that task is.
32. There is nothing more painful for the human spirit, after the excitement caused by the rapid succession of events, like that deathly calm of apathy and certainty that follows it, and deprives the soul of all hope and fear.
Mary Shelley's narrative is undoubtedly very powerful, her words are extremely well chosen.
33. My friend, I see from his interest, and from the astonishment and expectation in his eyes, that he expects me to tell him the secret I possess; but can not
Secrets are something that we all honestly want to know, it is enough to hint at one's knowledge for the other person to show their own interest.
34. From the beginning of my memories, he had been as he was then in height and proportion. Until now, I have never seen a being that looked like me or claimed any contact with me. What was I? The question came to me over and over again, only to be answered with groans.
Frankenstein's monster had to learn who he was and how he was supposed to act in the world.
35. Callous, ruthless creator! You had endowed me with perception and passions, and then you had thrown me into the world to the contempt and horror of humanity. But only from you could I seek mercy and compensation, and in you I decided to seek that justice that I tried in vain to obtain from any being in human form.
This famous monster had a great enmity with his "father" or "creator", as we can read in the work.
36. Sometimes it seemed a mere offspring of the evil principle; others, the most noble and divine thing that can be imagined. The monster.
Although we are not beautiful beings, our personal principles and morality will be what make us human.
37. God, in his mercy, made man beautiful and attractive, in his own image; instead, my figure was a filthy mixture, a parody of yours, made all the more hideous for its resemblance.
The ugliness of this monster is what leads it to be considered as such, a metaphor for the world of superficiality in which we live.
38. Many times I considered Satan the most appropriate symbol for my condition.
Frankenstein's creature noticed a certain harmony with Satan, because the two are somehow misunderstood by society.
39. If the study to which you devote yourself tends to weaken your affections and to destroy those simple pleasures in which you any alloy must intervene, then, this study is inevitably negative, that is, improper of the mind human.
We must not dedicate our life to work, we must work in order to live comfortably.
40. I saw how he withered and ended up losing beauty; how the corruption of death replaced the burning cheek; how the wonders of the eye and the brain were the inheritance of the worm.
Death is a stage in life that will come to all of us at the time of it, this writer was very fascinated by it.
41. Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of a vacuum, but out of chaos... it consists in the ability to grasp the possibilities of a subject and in the power to mold and shape the ideas that suggests.
A person is not defined by his physical appearance, but by his ideas and thoughts.
42. He dressed modestly, but his attitude made her a model of grace.
Attitude is something very important in social relationships, it can make us look much more beautiful.
43. Life and death seem to me ideal limits.
Death feeds the circle by which life runs its course.
44. All politics taken to the extreme must be the product of evil.
Extremisms are never positive, they lead man to perform the most despicable acts.
45. My dreams were more fantastic and magnificent than my writings.
What we idealize and reality are two very different things, we must not obsess ourselves in carrying out our fantasies.
46. It is hard to believe that a man's destiny is so low that he takes him to be born only to die.
Many of us need a purpose to be able to live with some peace of mind, we cannot conceive that we were not born for something specific.
47. Elegance is inferior to virtue.
Elegance is a quality by which we elevate our given virtues.
48. It is justice, not charity, that the world is wishing for.
Justice and revenge are two very different things that society often confuses.
49. The upset gesture, the lost look, put on his face a mixture of cowardice and fear.
In the gesture of another person we can come to understand many of their emotions.
50. I wandered the island like a ghost, cut off from everything I loved, and saddened by this separation.
Loneliness is something that no person wants for themselves, men are made to live in society.
51. The sleep in which I fell recovered me; and, waking up, I felt again as if I belonged to a race of human beings like myself.
We all need to rest when the time comes, it helps us order our ideas and priorities.
52. Learn from me, if not by my precepts, then at least by my example, how dangerous the acquisition of knowledge is.
We must be cautious with what we wish for, because certain desires can also bring us some misfortunes.
53. I was good and loving; suffering has debased me. Grant me happiness, and I will be virtuous again.
Unpleasant situations can turn us into unpleasant beings, after all, every painful situation that we experience causes a dent in us.
54. Men need to cling to something to such an extent that they are capable of planting their hands on a poisoned spear.
We must not fall into false hopes, being pragmatic is something that can be difficult for us to internalize but in the long run it will be much more beneficial.
55. The anguish of my feelings did not abate; there was no incident from which my anger and misery could not profit.
We ourselves are the ones who lock ourselves in our negative thoughts, in order to be truly happy we must think in a way that is consistent with it.
56. But thought brought power and knowledge, and arrayed in them the race of man assumed dignity and authority.
Thanks to the knowledge we possess, the current civilization has reached a good standard of living.
57. I will watch with the cunning of the serpent, and with its poison I will bite you. Mortal! You will regret the damage you have done to me.
Revenge can be an emotion that consumes us from the inside and generates great discomfort in us.
58. Each one of us writes a story, a ghost story.
We all live our own history and create in it the ghosts of the problems we encounter.
59. Do you think I care about my reputation?
Reputation is the idea that others have about us, it can be of great help to know how to preserve it.
60. As long as someone I could love is still alive, I always have reason to be afraid.
Losing someone we truly love is the hardest thing we can go through in life.
61. Love, which is but an episode in the life of men, is the whole story in the life of women.
Throughout all of human civilization, great love stories have always had a female figure as the protagonist.
62. I too can sow desolation; my enemy is not invulnerable.
We are all capable of causing discomfort in another person if we really put our minds to it.
63. How easily our feelings vary and how strangely we cling to life in moments of despair!
In the most difficult moments we all rearrange our thoughts and priorities.
64. We will not despair. We are not cowards or fatalists; We believe that God has placed in our hands the means for our survival and we are going to make the most of them.
Believing in God is something that can help us face life with a higher success rate.
65. Instead of hating me, he accepted me and taught me his goodness.
We must accept ourselves and know how to accept others as they are.
66. Mortal, you may hate, but be careful! You will spend your hours a prisoner of terror and sadness, and soon the blow that will rob you of happiness forever will fall on you.
Happiness is tremendously delicate, any change in our lives can take it away from us.
67. I could hardly bear the mass of thoughts that raced through my mind.
Thoughts can stun us on more than one occasion, meditation can help us know how to control them.
68. What did her crying mean? Did her tears express pain?
We can cry for many different emotions, babies for example cry for almost any situation in which they find themselves.
69. I am evil because I am not happy.
Unhappiness causes us great sorrow that can lead us to do evil in our lives.
70. I was wrong about only one thing: all the misfortunes that I imagined and feared were not even one hundredth part of the anguish that fate had in store for me.
We all encounter problems throughout our lives, we must give them the importance they really have and not overestimate them.
71. This death will bring him despair, and a thousand other misfortunes will torment and destroy him.
The death of a relative can cause a great change in us, both for better and for worse.
72. I would like to trample you to dust, if by doing so, by abolishing your miserable existence, I could bring back to life those you have murdered so diabolically!
Death is something that cannot be solved, revenge will not allow us to recover our deceased loved ones.
73. If such beautiful beings were miserable, it was no wonder that I, an imperfect and lonely creature, was also miserable.
This famous novel deals a lot with the issue of "ugliness" in people, unfortunately society is governed to a large extent by established canons of beauty.
74. From the moment I was convicted, the confessor has insisted and threatened until he has almost convinced me that I am the monster they say I am.
We must not allow others to contaminate us with their own ideas, we must be consistent with our own thoughts and with the idea we have of ourselves.
75. I will take revenge for my sufferings; if I cannot inspire love, I will unleash fear.
When we are deeply unhappy, we can come to wish bad on others so we can feel better about ourselves.
76. All judges prefer to convict ten innocent people before one guilty person escapes.
In the past, justice was much more inaccurate than today, many innocent people were judged unfairly.
77. Modern scientists promise very little; they know that metals cannot be transmuted, and that the elixir of life is an illusion.
Alchemy was an ancient science that, according to her promise, could provide man with the elixir of eternal youth or the philosopher's stone.
78. Feeling love for another will place me in the gear of existence led by others, and from which I am now excluded.
The monster in this novel tirelessly pursued his acceptance within society.
79. What could stop a determined heart and the strong will of a man?
If we set our mind to it firmly, we will be unstoppable and we will be able to carry out almost any task that is entrusted to us.
80. Satan had his companions, his demon followers, who admired and encouraged him; but I am alone and I am abominated.
Even Satan himself was surrounded by other demons or minions, but Frankenstein's monster was all alone in his misfortune.
81. My own mind began to grow, attentive with anxious thoughts.
Shelley's characters experience situations that make them go through moments of real suffering and discomfort.
82. I know that for the sympathy of a living being, I would make peace with everyone. I have in me a love the kind you can hardly imagine and a rage the kind you wouldn't believe. If I can't satisfy one, I will please the other.
The psychological description of the characters of this great author is well ahead of her time.
83. There is something in my soul that I do not understand.
The monster created by Shelley goes through constant periods of reflection about her own nature.
84. No man chooses evil because he is evil; he only confuses it with happiness, the good he seeks
Sometimes people choose evil to achieve their own interests or because they consider that this is the right path.
85. The different accidents of life are not as changeable as the feelings of human nature.
There is nothing more variable than the feeling of the human being at each moment of his life.
86. He was soon carried away by the waves and lost in darkness and distance.
Some of the descriptions of him contain an undeniable poetic value.
87. Live, and be happy, and make others happy
A very vital advice that we can apply in our day to day.
88. I need not describe the feelings of those whose dearest ties are broken by the most irreparable evil, the emptiness that presents itself to the soul and the despair that shows itself on the countenance.
The description of the psychological side of his characters is one of Mary Shelley's greatest assets.
89. What a strange nature is knowledge! He clings to a mind when he once has taken over her like a lichen on a rock.
Knowledge of any kind is something that comes to us and never leaves us.
90. We are creatures formed, but half made.
Frankenstein's monster is an iconic character halfway between humanity and aberration.
91. I am not an opinion person because I feel the counter arguments are too strong.
In his diaries and letters we can find very interesting reflections and confessions.
92. What can stop the determined heart and the determined will of man?
In Frankenstein we also find romantic passages.
93. The labors of men of genius, however misdirected, seldom fail to turn ultimately to the benefit of mankind.
A genius will always manage to find success in whatever work he undertakes.
94. Bye bye! He left you, and in you the last of humanity that these eyes will ever behold.
One of the final passages of her most internationally recognized work.
95. A thought of doubt pollutes the day
Sometimes our own mental contents can affect us significantly.
96. His countenance was all expression; his eyes were not dark but impenetrably deep; you seemed to discover space after space in his intellectual gaze
One of the many iconic descriptions we find in Frankenstein.
97. I feel an exquisite pleasure when I dwell on childhood memories, before misfortune stained my mind and change the bright visions of it of great use into somber and narrow reflections on me same.
A reflection about the passage of time and the change regarding memories.
98. Henceforth, evil became my good.
Shelley's characters sometimes choose to walk the path of evil.
99. All men hate the wretches
A very characteristic feature in the time in which the author lived.
100. The name "Italia" has magic in its very syllables.
Shelley bequeathed to us in her writings and personal journals some truly amazing insights.
