Accursed creator! Why did you form a monster so hideous that even you turned from me in disgust?

— Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Ah! It is well for the unfortunate to be resigned, but for the guilty there is no peace.

— Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

A human being in perfection ought always to preserve a calm and peaceful mind and never to allow passion or a transitory desire to disturb his tranquility.

— Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Alas! He is cold, he cannot answer me.

— Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

All men hate the wretched; how, then, must I be hated, who am miserable beyond all living things! Yet you, my creator, detest and spurn me, thy creature, to whom thou art bound by ties only dissoluble by the annihilation of one of us. You purpose to kill me. How dare you sport thus with life? Do your duty towards me, and I will do mine towards you and the rest of mankind. If you comply with my conditions, I will leave them and you at peace; but if you refuse, I will glut the maw of death, until it be satiated with the blood of your remaining friends.

— Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Allow me now to return to the cottagers, whose story excited in me such various feelings of indignation, delight, and wonder, but which all terminated in additional love and reverence for my protectors (for, so I loved, in an innocent, half painful self-deceit, to call them).

— Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

A mind of moderate capacity which closely pursues one study must infallibly arrive at great proficiency in that study.

— Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

At these moments I took refuge in the most perfect solitude. I passed whole days on the lake alone in a little boat, watching the clouds, and listening to the rippling of the waves, silent and listless.

— Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

But I have one want which I have never yet been able to satisfy; and the absence of the object of which I now feel as a most severe evil. I have no friend, Margaret: when I am glowing with the enthusiasm of success, there will be none to participate my joy; if I am assailed by disappointment, no one will endeavor to sustain me in dejection. I shall commit my thoughts to paper, it is true; but that is a poor medium for the communication of feeling. Furthermore, I desire the company of a man who could sympathize with me; whose eyes would reply to mine. You may deem me romantic, my dear sister, but I bitterly feel the want of a friend. I have no one near me, gentle yet courageous, possessed of a cultivated as well as of a capacious mind, whose tastes are like my own, to approve or amend my plans. How would such a friend repair the faults of your poor brother!

— Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

But in truth, neither the lonely meditations of the hermit nor the tumults raptures of the reseller, are capable of satisfying man’s heart. From the one we gather unquiet speculation, from the other satiety. The mind flags beneath the weight of thought, and droops in the heartless intercourse of those whose sole aim is amusement. There is no fruition in their vacant kindness, and sharp rock our beneath the smiling ripples of these shallow waters.

— Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley