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Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley citations
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Mary Shelley [ˈmɛəɹɪ ˈʃɛli], née Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin le 30 août 1797 à Somers Town, un faubourg de Londres , et morte le 1er février 1851 à Belgravia , est une femme de lettres anglaise, romancière, dramaturge, essayiste, biographe et auteur de récits de voyage. Elle est surtout connue pour son roman Frankenstein ou le Prométhée moderne.

Fille de la philosophe féministe Mary Wollstonecraft et de l'écrivain politique William Godwin, elle perd sa mère alors qu'elle-même n'est âgée que de dix jours. Son père se remarie quatre ans plus tard. Il offre à sa fille une éducation riche et l'encourage à adhérer à ses théories politiques libérales. En 1814, Mary Godwin entame une liaison avec un homme marié, partisan de son père, Percy Bysshe Shelley. Accompagné de Claire Clairmont, la fille de la belle-mère de Mary, le couple voyage à travers l'Europe. Au cours des deux années qui suivent, Mary et Percy affrontent un endettement permanent et la mort de leur fille. Ils se marient en 1816, après le suicide de la première épouse de Percy.

En 1816, lors d'un séjour près de Genève, Mary écrit son premier roman, Frankenstein. En 1818, les Shelley quittent le Royaume-Uni pour l'Italie, où meurent leur deuxième et leur troisième enfant, avant que Mary Shelley ne donne naissance à son fils, Percy Florence Shelley, qui seul survivra. En 1822, son mari se noie dans le golfe de la Spezia, au cours d'une tempête. Un an plus tard, Mary Shelley retourne en Angleterre et, dès lors, se consacre entièrement à l'éducation de son fils et à sa carrière d'auteure. Les dix dernières années de sa vie sont marquées par la maladie.

Elle décède d'une tumeur du cerveau le 1er février 1851.

Jusqu'aux années 1970, Mary Shelley, outre son Frankenstein, est surtout connue pour les efforts qu'elle fit en vue de faire publier les œuvres de son mari. Les études récentes ont permis une vision plus complète de son œuvre et montré que Mary Shelley est restée toute sa vie une radicale sur le plan politique, soutenant l'idée que la coopération et la solidarité, pratiquées tout naturellement par les femmes au sein de leur famille, sont la voie qui permet de réformer la société civile. Wikipedia  

✵ 30. août 1797 – 1. février 1851  •  Autres noms ਮੇਰੀ ਸ਼ੈਲੀ
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley photo
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley: 98 citations0 J'aime

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley citations célèbres

“vous ne pouvez contester l'inestimable bénéfice que j'apporterai à l'humanité jusqu'à la dernière génération”

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Frankenstein ou le Prométhée moderne

Frankenstein

“Je souhaite ardemment que l'accomplissement de vos désirs ne devienne pas pour vous, comme ce, le fut pour moi, un poison venimeux.”

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Frankenstein ou le Prométhée moderne

Frankenstein

“Pourquoi respecterais-je l'être humain quand il me méprise? Qu'il vive donc en harmonie avec moi. S'il y consentait, loin de lui nuire, je lui ferais tout le bien possible, et c'est avec des larmes de joie que je lui témoignerais ma reconnaissance. Mais cela ne peut être. Les sentiments des humains de dressent comme une barrière pour empêcher un tel accord. Jamais pourtant je ne me soumettrai à un aussi abject esclavage. Je me vengerai du tord que l'on me fait. Si je ne puis inspirer l'amour, eh bien, j'infligerai la peur, et cela principalement à vous, mon ennemi par ecellence. Parce que vous êtes mon créateur, je jure de vous exécrer à jamais. Prenez garde! Je me consacrerai à votre destruction, et je ne serai satisfait que lorsque j'aurai plongé votre coeur dans la désolation, lorsque je vous aurai fait maudire le jour où vous êtes né.”

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Frankenstein ou le Prométhée moderne

Frankenstein

“Il était déjà une heure du matin; une pluie funèbre martelait les vitres et ma bougie était presque consumée, lorsque à la lueur de cette lumière à demi éteinte, je vis s’ouvrir l’œil jaune et terne de cet être; sa respiration pénible commença, et un mouvement convulsif agita ses membres.”

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Frankenstein ou le Prométhée moderne

It was already one in the morning; the rain pattered dismally against the panes, and my candle was nearly burnt out, when, by the glimmer of the half-extinguished light, I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open; it breathed hard, and a convulsive motion agitated its limbs.
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Frankenstein ou le Prométhée moderne (1818)

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley: Citations en anglais

“I am not a person of opinions because I feel the counter arguments too strongly.”

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Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Source: The Journals of Mary 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.”

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Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Source: Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

“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.”

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Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Frankenstein ou le Prométhée moderne

Source: Frankenstein

“I was seized by remorse and the sense of guilt, which hurried me away to a hell of intense tortures as no language can describe”

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Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Frankenstein ou le Prométhée moderne

Source: Frankenstein

“I see by your eagerness, and the wonder and hope which your eyes express, my friend, that you expect to be in formed of the secret with which I am acquainted. That cannot be.”

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Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Frankenstein ou le Prométhée moderne

Source: Frankenstein

“My spirit will sleep in peace, or if it thinks, it will not surely think thus. Farewell.”

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Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Frankenstein ou le Prométhée moderne

The monster to Robert Walton
Frankenstein (1818)
Source: Frankenstein; Or, the Modern Prometheus
Contexte: I shall die, and what I now feel be no longer felt. Soon these burning miseries will be extinct. I shall ascend my funeral pile triumphantly and exult in the agony of the torturing flames. The light of that conflagration will fade away; my ashes will be swept into the sea by the winds. My spirit will sleep in peace, or if it thinks, it will not surely think thus. Farewell.

“What can stop the determined heart and resolved will of man?”

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Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Frankenstein ou le Prométhée moderne

Source: Frankenstein

“I shall commit my thoughts to paper, it is true; but that is a poor medium for the communication of feeling. I desire the company of a man who could sympathize with me, whose eyes would reply to mine.”

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Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Frankenstein ou le Prométhée moderne

Source: Frankenstein

“I felt emotions of gentleness and pleasure, that had long appeared dead, revive within me. Half surprised by the novelty of these sensations, I allowed myself to be borne away by them, and forgetting my solitude and deformity, dared to be happy.”

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Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Frankenstein ou le Prométhée moderne

Source: Frankenstein

“I also became a poet, and for one year lived in a Paradise of my own creation; I imagined that I also might obtain a niche in the temple where the names of Homer and Shakespeare are consecrated.”

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Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Frankenstein ou le Prométhée moderne

Source: Frankenstein

“Be men, or be more than men. Be steady to your purposes and firm as a rock. This ice is not made of such stuff as your hearts may be; it is mutable and cannot withstand you if you say that it shall not.”

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Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Frankenstein ou le Prométhée moderne

Source: Frankenstein

“We are fashioned creatures, but half made up.”

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Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Frankenstein ou le Prométhée moderne

Source: Frankenstein

“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!”

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Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Frankenstein ou le Prométhée moderne

Source: Frankenstein

“Her countenance was all expression; her eyes were not dark but impenetrably deep; you seemed to discover space after space in their intellectual glance.”

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Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley The Last Man

Source: The Last Man

“Seek happiness in tranquility and avoid ambition even if it be only the apparently innocent one of distinguishing yourself in science and discoveries.”

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Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

“I love man as my fellow; but his scepter, real, or usurped, extends not to me, unless the reason of an individual demands my homage; and even then the submission is to reason, and not to man.”

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Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Source: A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

“One wondering thought pollutes the day”

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Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Frankenstein ou le Prométhée moderne

Source: Frankenstein

“As a child I scribbled; and my favourite pastime, during the hours given me for recreation, was to "write stories." Still I had a dearer pleasure than this, which was the formation of castles in the air—the indulging in waking dreams—the following up trains of thought, which had for their subject the formation of a succession of imaginary incidents. My dreams were at once more fantastic and agreeable than my writings.”

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Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Introduction http://www.rc.umd.edu/editions/frankenstein/1831v1/intro.html to the 1831 edition of Frankenstein

“We are unfashioned creatures, but half made up, if one wiser, better, dearer than ourselves — such a friend ought to be — do not lend his aid to perfectionate our weak and faulty natures.”

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Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Frankenstein ou le Prométhée moderne

Victor Frankenstein, quoted by Robert Walton in "Letter 4"
Frankenstein (1818)

“So much has been done, exclaimed the soul of Frankenstein — more, far more, will I achieve; treading in the steps already marked, I will pioneer a new way, explore unknown powers, and unfold to the world the deepest mysteries of creation.”

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Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Frankenstein ou le Prométhée moderne

Victor Frankenstein in Ch. 3
Frankenstein (1818)

“The last man! Yes I may well describe that solitary being's feelings, feeling myself as the last relic of a beloved race, my companions extinct before me…”

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Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Journal entry on the writing of her science-fiction novel The Last Man (14 May 1824)

“My person was hideous and my stature gigantic. What did this mean? Who was I? What was I? Whence did I come? What was my destination? These questions continually recurred, but I was unable to solve them.”

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Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Frankenstein ou le Prométhée moderne

The monster in Ch. 15
Frankenstein (1818)

“The idea so possessed my mind, that a thrill of fear ran through me, and I wished to exchange the ghastly image of my fancy for the realities around. I see them still; the very room, the dark parquet, the closed shutters, with the moonlight struggling through, and the sense I had that the glassy lake and white high Alps were beyond.”

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Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Introduction http://www.rc.umd.edu/editions/frankenstein/1831v1/intro.html to the 1831 edition of Frankenstein

“My food is not that of man; I do not destroy the lamb and the kid to glut my appetite; acorns and berries afford me sufficient nourishment. My companion will be of the same nature as myself and will be content with the same fare. We shall make our bed of dried leaves; the sun will shine on us as on man and will ripen our food. The picture I present to you is peaceful and human, and you must feel that you could deny it only in the wantonness of power and cruelty.”

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Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Frankenstein ou le Prométhée moderne

The monster to Victor Frankenstein in Ch. 17
Frankenstein (1818)

“I shall thus give a general answer to the question, so frequently asked me—"How I, then a young girl, came to think of, and to dilate upon, so very hideous an idea?"”

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Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Introduction http://www.rc.umd.edu/editions/frankenstein/1831v1/intro.html to the 1831 edition of Frankenstein

“I busied myself to think of a story, — a story to rival those which had excited us to this task. One which would speak to the mysterious fears of our nature, and awaken thrilling horror—one to make the reader dread to look round, to curdle the blood, and quicken the beatings of the heart. If I did not accomplish these things, my ghost story would be unworthy of its name.”

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Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Introduction http://www.rc.umd.edu/editions/frankenstein/1831v1/intro.html to the 1831 edition of Frankenstein

“What terrified me will terrify others; and I need only describe the spectre which had haunted my midnight pillow.”

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Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Introduction http://www.rc.umd.edu/editions/frankenstein/1831v1/intro.html to the 1831 edition of Frankenstein

“Lord Byron, who was writing the third canto of Childe Harold, was the only one among us who put his thoughts upon paper. These, as he brought them successively to us, clothed in all the light and harmony of poetry, seemed to stamp as divine the glories of heaven and earth, whose influences we partook with him.”

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Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Introduction http://www.rc.umd.edu/editions/frankenstein/1831v1/intro.html to the 1831 edition of Frankenstein

“One thing I will add: if I have ever found kindness, it has not been from Liberals; to disengage myself from them was the first act of my freedom.”

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Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Letter to Edward Trelawny (27 January 1837). Google Books https://books.google.com/books?id=ED9bAAAAMAAJ&dq=if%20i%20have%20ever%20found%20kindness%2C%20it%20has%20not%20been%20from%20the%20liberals&pg=PA283#v=onepage&q=if%20i%20have%20ever%20found%20kindness,%20it%20has%20not%20been%20from%20the%20liberals&f=false

“At the age of twenty six I am in the condition of an aged person — all my old friends are gone … & my heart fails when I think by how few ties I hold to the world….”

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Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Journal (15 May 1824)

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