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

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

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Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
World
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More quotes by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

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But her's was the misery of innocence, which, like a cloud that passes over the fair moon, for a while hides, but cannot tarnish its brightness.
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
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There is something at work in my soul, which I do not understand.
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
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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
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Teach him to think for himself? Oh, my God, teach him rather to think like other people!
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
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I feel exquisite pleasure in dwelling on the recollections of childhood, before misfortune had tainted my mind, and changed its bright visions of extensive usefulness into gloomy and narrow reflections upon self.
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
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These wonderful narrations inspired me with strange feelings. Was man, indeed, at once so powerful, so virtuous, and magnificent, yet so vicious and base? He appeared at one time a mere scion of the evil principle and at another as all that can be conceived of noble and godlike.
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
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I was benevolent and good misery made me a fiend. Make me happy, and I shall again be virtuous.
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
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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
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Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of a 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.
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
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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 certainly unlawful, that is to say, not befitting the human mind.
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
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It was the secrets of heaven and earth that I desired to learn and whether it was the outward substance of things or the inner spirit of nature and the mysterious soul of man that occupied me, still my inquiries were directed to the metaphysical, or in its highest sense, the physical secrets of the world.
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
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But he found that a traveller's life is one that includes much pain amidst its enjoyments. His feelings are for ever on the stretch and when he begins to sink into repose, he finds himself obliged to quit that on which he rests in pleasure for something new, which again engages his attention, and which also he forsakes for other novelties.
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
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Unhappy man! Do you share my maddness? Have you drunk also of the intoxicating draught? Hear me let me reveal my tale, and you will dash the cup from your lips!
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
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Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change. The sun might shine, or the clouds might lour: but nothing could appear to me as it had done the day before.
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
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The instructor can scarcely give sensibility where it is essentially wanting, nor talent to the unpercipient block. But he can cultivate and direct the affections of the pupil, who puts forth, as a parasite, tendrils by which to cling, not knowing to what - to a supporter or a destroyer.
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
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Poetry, and the principle of Self, of which money is the visible incarnation, are the God and the Mammon of the world.
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
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Beware for I am fearless, and therefore powerful.
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
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Oh! Stars and clouds and winds, ye are all about to mock me if ye really pity me, crush sensation and memory let me become as nought but if not, depart, depart, and leave me in darkness.
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
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Ennui, the demon, waited at the threshold of his noiseless refuge, and drove away the stirring hopes and enlivening expectations, which form the better part of life.
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
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The labours of men of genius, however erroneously directed, scarcely ever fail in ultimately turning to the solid advantage of mankind.
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley