Remarks by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

“I would rather be useful in obscurity than celebrated for accomplishments which have done no good.”

Preferring genuine usefulness to fame or public recognition. · Letter

“To remember is sometimes to suffer, but to forget would be to lose again what we once possessed.”

Exploring the painful but precious connection between memory and loss. · Journal

“The world changes whether we consent to it or not, and wisdom lies partly in learning when to resist and when to yield.”

Presenting wisdom as a balance between resistance and acceptance. · Journal

“When I am unhappy I seek solitude, but when I am most unhappy I need friendship.”

Capturing the tension between withdrawing from others and needing companionship. · Journal

“The task of the artist is not merely to please, but to awaken thoughts and feelings which might otherwise remain dormant.”

Giving art an intellectual and emotional purpose beyond entertainment. · Essay

“We are not made miserable by change itself, but by our insistence that things should remain as they were.”

Suggesting that resistance to change can deepen suffering. · Journal

“A life without affection may be endured, but it cannot be called a happy life.”

Placing emotional attachment at the centre of human happiness. · Letter

“There is no substitute for perseverance in any undertaking worth completing.”

A straightforward affirmation of persistence as the foundation of achievement. · Letter

“The greatest errors of our lives often arise because we mistake what we desire for what is true.”

Warning against allowing desire to distort judgement. · Journal

“I have always believed that a life devoted entirely to oneself must in the end become unbearably small.”

Arguing for a life enlarged by concern for others. · Journal

“The solitude of the imagination is not loneliness; it is the company of innumerable beings created by the mind.”

Distinguishing creative solitude from emotional isolation. · Essay

“The future is not ours to command, but it is ours to meet with courage and intelligence.”

Combining acceptance of uncertainty with a call for courage and thought. · Essay

“There are wounds which time does not heal, but time teaches us how to carry them.”

Offering a restrained view of healing in which endurance matters more than forgetting. · Journal

“I have learned to distrust easy happiness, because happiness which costs nothing is seldom deeply felt.”

Distinguishing durable happiness from superficial pleasure. · Journal

“The desire to be loved is natural, but the desire to make oneself worthy of love is more important.”

Turning the longing for affection towards personal character and responsibility. · Journal

“Every great work of imagination contains something of the life from which its creator cannot escape.”

Suggesting that imaginative literature inevitably bears traces of lived experience. · Essay

“It is not enough to feel deeply; one must also learn how to give form to feeling.”

Emphasising craft as the means by which emotion becomes art. · Essay

“The beauty of the natural world has been my consolation in hours when human companionship could not reach me.”

Finding consolation in nature during periods of emotional isolation. · Journal

“I have often thought that the deepest friendships are those in which silence is as comfortable as speech.”

Valuing companionship that does not depend upon constant conversation. · Letter

“The best remedy for despair is work, for work gives the mind another direction in which to travel.”

Suggesting purposeful activity as a way of resisting despair. · Letter

“To forgive is not to forget the injury, but to refuse to allow it to govern the future.”

Distinguishing forgiveness from forgetting and linking it with freedom from the past. · Journal

“I have always thought that sympathy is one of the noblest gifts of the human mind.”

Treating sympathy as a particularly valuable human capacity. · Essay

“The imagination does not deceive us when it reveals possibilities that ordinary experience has concealed.”

Defending imaginative vision as a means of discovering possibilities. · Essay

“A writer must observe life closely, but must also possess enough imagination to see beyond what the eye can perceive.”

Describing the balance between observation and imaginative transformation. · Essay

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