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.
Interpretation
The quote reflects feelings of loneliness and loss as one ages, highlighting the fleeting nature of friendships and connections.
In this quote, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley expresses a profound sense of isolation and nostalgia as she compares her own feelings at a young age of twenty-six to those of an aged person. She laments the loss of her friends and the weakening of her ties to the world around her, evoking emotions of sorrow and contemplation about the impermanence of relationships and the weight of solitude.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech about the importance of maintaining friendships as we age.
Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of a void, but out of chaos; the materials must in the first place be afforded; it can give form to dark, shapeless substances, but cannot bring into being the substance itself.
The instructor can scarcely give sensibility where it is essentially wanting, nor talent to the unpercipient block. But he can cultivate and direct the affections of the pupil, who puts forth, as a parasite, tendrils by which to cling, not knowing to what - to a supporter or a destroyer.
What terrified me will terrify others; and I need only describe the spectre which had haunted my midnight pillow.
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.
Heavy misfortunes have befallen us, but let us only cling closer to what remains, and transfer our love for those whom we have lost to those who yet live. Our circle will be small, but bound close by the ties of affection and mutual misfortune. And when time shall have softened your despair, new and dear objects of care will be born to replace those of whom we have been so cruelly deprived.
Hateful day when I received life!' I exclaimed in agony. 'Accursed creator! Why did you form a monster so hideous that even you turned from me in disgust? God, in pity, made man beautiful and alluring, after his own image; but my form is a filthy type of yours, more horrid even from the very resemlance. Satan had his companions, fellow-devils, to admire and encourage him; but I am solitary and abhorred.' - Frankenstein
He was well aware that of the two of three thousand times he had made love (how many times had he made love in his life?) only two or three were really essential and unforgettable. The rest were mere echoes, imitations, repetitions, or reminiscences.
No one is more conventional than a woman who is falling out of love.
I must quit marrying men who feel inferior to me. Somewhere there must be a man who could be my husband and not feel inferior.
But on the way home tonight, you wish you'd picked him up, held him a bit. Just held him, very close to your heart, his cheek by the hollow of your shoulder, full of sleep. As it it were you who could, somehow, save him. For the moment not caring who you're supposed to be registered as. For the moment, anyway, no longer who the Caesars say you are.
My mother taught me something at a young age - she said 'you are the company you keep.' To define yourself by some label or some level of resources - that's pretty shallow.
What you can do with relations is greater than what you can do with guns.
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