Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Solitude was my only consolation - deep, dark, deathlike solitude.

Polluted by crimes, and torn by the bitterest remorse, where can I find rest but in death?

Of what a strange nature is knowledge! It clings to a mind when it has once seized on it like a lichen on a rock." - Frankenstein p115

Oh! 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. Do not return to your families with the stigma of disgrace marked on your brows. Return as heroes who have fought and conquered, and who know not what it is to turn their backs on the foe.

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.

Evil thenceforth became my good.

Nothing is more painful to the human mind than, after the feelings have been worked up by a quick succession of events, the dead calmness of inaction and certainty which follows and deprives the soul both of hope and fear.

The world was to me a secret which I desired to devine.

If our impulses were confined to hunger, thirst, and desire, we might be nearly free; but now we are moved by every wind that blows and a chance word or scene that that word may convey to us.

My education was neglected, yet I was passionately fond of reading.

One as deformed and horrible as myself, could not deny herself to me. My companion must be of the same species, and have the same defects... with whom I can live in the interchange of those sympathies necessary for my being.

Elegance is inferior to virtue.

From my birth I have aspired like the eagle - but unlike the eagle, my wings have failed. . . . Congratulate me then that I have found a fitting scope for my powers.

With how many things are we on the brink of becoming acquainted, if cowardice or carelessness did not restrain our inquiries.

But her's was the misery of innocence, which, like a cloud that passes over the fair moon, for a while hides, but cannot tarnish its brightness.

The fallen angel becomes a malignant devil.

The very winds whispered in soothing accents, and maternal Nature bade me weep no more.

...once I falsely hoped to meet the beings who, pardoning my outward form, would love me for the excellent qualities which I was capable of unfolding.

But he found that a traveller's life is one that includes much pain amidst its enjoyments. His feelings are for ever on the stretch; and when he begins to sink into repose, he finds himself obliged to quit that on which he rests in pleasure for something new, which again engages his attention, and which also he forsakes for other novelties.

The fallen angel becomes a malignant devil. Yet even that enemy of God and man had friends and associates in his desolation; I am alone.

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.