I saw -- with shut eyes, but acute mental vision -- I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life, and stir with an uneasy, half-vital motion.
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 ShelleyIt is hardly surprising that women concentrate on the way they look instead of what is in their minds since not much has been put in their minds to begin with.
Mary Wollstonecraft ShelleyEverything must have a beginning ... and that beginning must be linked to something that went before.
Mary Wollstonecraft ShelleyIt was very different when the masters of science sought immortality and power; such views, although futile, were grand: but now the scene was changed. The ambition of the inquirer seemed to limit itself to the annihilation of those visions on which my interest in science was chiefly founded. I was required to exchange chimeras of boundless grandeur for realities of little worth.
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley