Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Man," I cried, "how ignorant art thou in thy pride of wisdom!

...learn from my miseries, and do not seek to increase your own.

Life and death appeared to me ideal bounds, which I should first break through, and pour a torrent of light into our dark world.

The agony of my feelings allowed me no respite; no incident occurred from which my rage and misery could not extract its food.

The guilty are allowed, by human laws, bloody as they are, to speak in their own defence before they are condemned.

Life is obstinate and clings closest where it is most hated.

Men become cannibals of their own hearts; remorse, regret, and restless impatience usurp the place of more wholesome feeling: every thing seems better than that which is.

To examine the causes of life, we must first have recourse to death.

But success shall crown my endeavours. Wherefore not? Thus far I have gone, tracking a secure way over the pathless seas: the very stars themselves being witnesses and testimonies of my triumph. Why not still proceed over the untamed yet obedient element? What can stop the determined heart and resolved will of man?

So much has been done, exclaimed the soul of Frankenstein - more, far more, will I achieve; treading in the steps already marked, I will pioneer a new way, explore unknown powers, and unfold to the world the deepest mysteries of creation.

I am not a person of opinions because I feel the counter arguments too strongly.

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.

Ennui, the demon, waited at the threshold of his noiseless refuge, and drove away the stirring hopes and enlivening expectations, which form the better part of life.

It is true, we shall be monsters, cut off from all the world; but on that account we shall be more attached to one another.

did you not call this a glorious expedition? and wherefore was it glorious? not because the way was smooth and placid as a southern sea, but because it was full of dangers and terror, because at every new incident your fortitude was to be called forth and your courage exhibited, because danger and death surrounded it, and these you were brave to overcome. for this was it a glorious , for this was it an honorable undertaking

I trembled, and my heart failed within me; when, on looking up, I saw, by the light of the moon, the daemon at the casement.

You are my creator, but I am your master; Obey!

It was very different when the masters of science sought immortality and power; such views, although futile, were grand: but now the scene was changed. The ambition of the inquirer seemed to limit itself to the annihilation of those visions on which my interest in science was chiefly founded. I was required to exchange chimeras of boundless grandeur for realities of little worth.

My spirit will sleep in peace; or if it thinks, it will not surely think thus. Farewell.

We are fashioned creatures, but half made up. - Victor Frankenstein

A mind of moderate capacity which closely pursues one study must infallibly arrive at great proficiency in that study.