The careful rearer of the ductile human plant can instil his own religion, and surround the soul by such a moral atmosphere, as shall become to its latest day the air it breathes.
MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT SHELLEY, Lodore
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.
MARY SHELLEY, The Last Man
The different accidents of life are not so changeable as the feelings of human nature.
MARY SHELLEY, Frankenstein
Thus strangely are our souls constructed, and by slight ligaments are we bound to prosperity and ruin.
MARY SHELLEY, Frankenstein
Solitude becomes a sort of tangible enemy, the more dangerous, because it dwells within the citadel itself.
MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT SHELLEY, Lodore
Live, and be happy, and make others so.
MARY SHELLEY, Frankenstein
It is time to effect a revolution in female manners -- time to restore to them their lost dignity -- and make them, as a part of the human species, labour by reforming themselves to reform the world. It is time to separate unchangeable morals from local manners.
MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT SHELLEY, A Vindication of the Rights of Women
Heavy misfortunes have befallen us, but let us only cling closer to what remains, and transfer our love for those whom we have lost to those who yet live. Our circle will be small, but bound close by the ties of affection and mutual misfortune. And when time shall have softened your despair, new and dear objects of care will be born to replace those of whom we have been so cruelly deprived.
MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT SHELLEY, Frankenstein
The little respect paid to chastity in the male world is, I am persuaded, the grand source of many of the physical and moral evils that torment mankind, as well as of the vices and follies that degrade and destroy women; yet, at school, boys infallibly lose that decent bashfulness, which might have ripened into modesty at home.
MARY SHELLEY, A Vindication of the Rights of Women
Accursed creator! Why did you form a monster so hideous that even you turned from me in disgust? 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 resemlance. Satan had his companions, fellow-devils, to admire and encourage him; but I am solitary and abhorred.
MARY SHELLEY, Frankenstein
Seek happiness in tranquility and avoid ambition even if it be only the apparently innocent one of distinguishing yourself in science and discoveries.
