To examine the causes of life, we must first have recourse to death.
Interpretation
Understanding life requires an awareness of death.
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's quote suggests that to truly comprehend the essence and causes of life, one must consider the inevitability of death. This perspective emphasizes the interconnectedness of existence and mortality, pointing out that the meaning of life can be illuminated by acknowledging its transience and the finite nature of our experiences.
In practice
A speaker at a graduation ceremony might use this quote to remind students to value their lives in the face of life's impermanence.
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
Represent to yourself a dark city all burning and stinking with fire and brimstone. The damned are in the depth of hell within this woful city, where they suffer unspeakable torments in all their senses and members. Consider above all the eternity of their pains, which above all things makes hell intolerable.
The history of mankind is the history of our misunderstandings with god, for he doesn't understand us, and we don't understand him.
A civilization is built on what is required of men, not on that which is provided for them.
I'm going to tell you what my religion is. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Period. Terminato. Finito.
News networks giving a greater voice to viewers because the social web is so popular are like a chef on the Titanic who, seeing the looming iceberg and fleeing customers, figures ice is the future and starts making snow cones.
And so they are ever returning to us, the dead.
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