Mary Shelley

Noth­ing is so pain­ful to the hu­man mind as a great and sud­den change.

he might sleep in the be­lief that the si­lence of the grave would quench forever the tran­si­ent ex­ist­ence of the hideous corpse which he had looked upon as the cradle of life.

I wish therefore that my companion should be wiser and more experienced than myself, to confirm and support me; nor have I believed it impossible to find a true friend.

Even broken in spirit as he is, no one can feel more deeply than he does the beauties of nature

Even broken in spirit as he is, no one can feel more deeply than he does the beau­ties of nature. The starry sky, the sea, and every sight af­forded by these won­der­ful re­gions, seems still to have the power of el­ev­at­ing his soul from earth. Such a man has a double ex­ist­ence: he may suf­fer misery, and be over­whelmed by dis­ap­point­ments; yet, when he has re­tired into him­self, he will be like a ce­les­tial spirit, that has a halo around him, within whose circle no grief or folly ven­tures.

It was on a dreary night of Novem­ber

Alas! 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

The cup of life was poisoned forever;

for noth­ing con­trib­utes so much to tran­quil­lise the mind as a steady pur­pose—a point on which the soul may fix its in­tel­lec­tual eye

The world was to me a secret which I de­sired to di­vine.