I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend. Make me happy, and I shall again be virtuous. - Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

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.

The agonies of remorse poison the luxury there is otherwise sometimes found in the excess of grief.

"I felt that blank incapability of invention which is the greatest misery of authorship, when dull Nothing replies to our anxious invocations. "Have you thought of a story?" I was asked every morning, and each morning I was forced to reply with a mortifying negative"