Mary Shelley, known professionally as Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, was born in 1797 in London and went on to become one of the most famous English Romantic novelists. As Britannica reported, she’s best known for writing Frankenstein, one of the quintessential examples of Gothic horror and what many consider to be one of the first sci-fi novels.
Thanks to her liberal upbringing and way with words—along with many other things—she has gone down in history as one of the most interesting women in literature (and beyond). Her father, William Godwin, was a radical philosopher, and her mother was Mary Wollstonecraft, a famed women’s rights advocate who died 11 days after Mary was born. And even though Mary Shelley didn’t receive a formal education, she was consistently around scholars and writers thanks to her father, so she grew up with a strong intellectual curiosity and published her first work at age 11.
Having written so many stories and works, our quote of the day is one of her simpler ideas, yet still profound, and a good reminder. In a world where it’s easy to get bogged down by failure and the end of things, Shelley’s words remind us we all have to start somewhere, even if it’s starting over.
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Quote of the Day by Mary Shelley
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“The beginning is always today.”
This is a quote frequently attributed to Mary Shelley, as noted by a publication containing three of her short stories. The 2014 publication of The Short Stories Of Mary Shelley - Volume 2: “The beginning is always today," even has this quote as part of its title.
Shelley is known for her profound words and expert storytelling. She notoriously wrote her novel Frankenstein at Villa Diodati in Cologny, Switzerland, during 1816’s “year without a summer.” She, her husband Percy Bysshe Shelley (a Romantic poet) and writer and doctor, John Polidori, met famous British poet Lord Byron at that villa, where Byron proposed they each write the scariest ghost story they could think of. And the rest is history.
But this isn’t the first time she wrote about beginnings, with a famous mention of creating something at the start of this very novel...
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For an author who wrote something as dark and thought-provoking as Frankenstein, something as short as “The beginning is always today” can seem so simple. But that doesn’t mean it’s not an important reminder.
Regardless of what’s going on in your life—even if everything is falling apart—you have to start back up somewhere, and today is as good a time as any to begin again. Yes, the rising sun brings a new day, which is the literal beginning of something. But it’s a good place to start if you’re feeling lost on how to move forward with or after something. You can choose to begin again now.
Interestingly, in the 1831 introduction for Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus, per Britannica, Mary Shelley wrote something similar:
“Everything must have a beginning, and that beginning must be linked to something that went before…”
The novel was originally published anonymously in 1818, and this introduction was for the revised edition 13 years later, where Shelley goes into the story behind the novel's creation. Right before this line, she talks about how she could not think of a ghost story to save her life. She racked her brain for ideas, and couldn’t come up with anything, even though her companions asked her every morning if she’d thought of a story yet.
She then writes this line, and follows it up by stating that even invention doesn’t come out of thin air. Instead, it comes from “making something out of chaos.” Creating something can include taking another thing and molding it into what you want, but it doesn’t just come from nothing.
After noting this, Shelley writes that inspiration for the premise of her story—a scientist who created life, and was horrified with this creation—came from a conversation between Lord Byron and her husband about life and its basic principles.
So even when you’re all out of steam and don’t seem to have any ideas on where to start or how to create a plan, remember to start from somewhere because new things don't come from nothing. Inspiration comes from your life, your past and other information your brain has from experience. And today is always a new beginning.
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More Quotes from Mary Shelley
“Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change.” — Frankenstein“Beware; for I am fearless, and therefore powerful.” — Frankenstein“Solitude was my only consolation - deep, dark, deathlike solitude.”“When falsehood can look so like the truth, who can assure themselves of certain happiness?”"Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of the void but out of chaos.""If I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear!" — Frankenstein“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.”Up Next:
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