Mary Shelley
Mary Shelley
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelleywas an English novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer, best known for her Gothic novel Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus. She also edited and promoted the works of her husband, the Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley. Her father was the political philosopher William Godwin, and her mother was the philosopher and feminist Mary Wollstonecraft...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionAuthor
Date of Birth30 August 1797
anxious blank dull felt greatest invention misery
I thought and pondered - vainly. I felt that blank incapability of invention which is the greatest misery of authorship, when dull Nothing replies to our anxious invocations.
alloy apply destroy human pleasures possibly simple study taste tendency
If the study to which you apply yourself has a tendency to weaken your affections, and to destroy your taste for those simple pleasures in which no alloy can possibly mix, then that study is not befitting the human mind.
armies army-and-navy consist contain influence men resolute robust seldom standing strong vigorous
Standing armies can never consist of resolute robust men; they may be well-disciplined machines, but they will seldom contain men under the influence of strong passions, or with very vigorous faculties.
appearance bright elevated enchanting future gilded hope past present rays spirits
My spirits were elevated by the enchanting appearance of nature; the past was blotted from my memory, the present was tranquil, and the future gilded by bright rays of hope and anticipations of joy.
consist creating humbly
Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist of creating out of void, but out of chaos.
bring cannot consist creating form humbly materials substance
Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of the void, but out of chaos; the materials must, in the first place, be afforded: it can give form to dark, shapeless substances, but cannot bring into being the substance itself.
created miserable monster whom wretch
I beheld the wretch - the miserable monster whom I had created