Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void, but out of chaos.
Mary Wollstonecraft ShelleyIt would be an endless task to trace the variety of meannesses, cares, and sorrows into which women are plunged by the prevailing opinion that they were created rather to feel than reason.
Mary Wollstonecraft ShelleyIf 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 ShelleyI required kindness and sympathy, but I did not believe myself utterly unworthy of it.
Mary Wollstonecraft ShelleyIt 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