It was the secrets of heaven and earth that I desired to learn.
Interpretation
The desire to understand deeper truths about existence is a fundamental human pursuit.
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's quote reflects a profound yearning for knowledge and understanding beyond the surface of life. It speaks to the innate curiosity of humanity to explore the mysteries of existence, both in the natural world and the abstract concepts of life and death, suggesting that the quest for understanding is a significant part of the human experience.
In practice
This quote could be used in a speech about the importance of education and lifelong learning.
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
The earliest sensation at the onset of illness, often preceding the recognition of identifiable symptoms, is apprehension. Something has gone wrong, and a glimpse of mortality shifts somewhere deep in the mind. It is the most ancient of our fears.
He does it with better grace, but I do it more natural.
There is the mind itself. It is like a smooth lake which when struck, say by a stone, vibrates. The vibrations gather together and react on the stone, and all through the lake they will spread and be felt. The mind is like the lake; it is constantly being set in vibrations, which leave an impression on the mind; and the idea of the Ego, or personal self, the "I", is the result of these impressions. This "I" therefore is only the very rapid transmission of force and is in itself no reality.
Everywhere I've turned somebody has wanted to sacrifice me for my own goodβonly /they/ were the ones who benefited. And now we start on the old sacrificial merry-go-round. At what point do we stop?
There is a crisis of public morality. Instead of policing bedrooms, we ought to be doing a better job policing boardrooms.
Every man is a creature of the age in which he lives and few are able to raise themselves above the ideas of the time.
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