Frankenstein

by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

nothing contributes so much to tranquillize the mind as a steady purpose,—a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye.

My courage and my resolution is firm; but my hopes fluctuate, and my spirits are often depressed.

I bitterly feel the want of a friend. I have no one near me, gentle yet courageous, possessed of a cultivated as well as of a capacious mind, whose tastes are like my own, to approve or amend my plans.

I ardently desired the acquisition of knowledge. I had often, when at home, thought it hard to remain during my youth cooped up in one place, and had longed to enter the world, and take my station among other human beings.

how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world, than he who aspires to become greater than his nature will allow.

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.