Frankenstein Quotes

“I had begun life with benevolent intentions, and thirsted for the moment when I should put them in practice, and make myself useful to my fellow-beings. Now all was blasted: instead of that serenity of conscience, which allowed me to look back upon the past with self-satisfaction, and from thence to gather promise of new hopes, I was seized by remorse and the sense of guilt, which hurried me away to a hell of intense tortures, such as no language can describe.”
― Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein

“Hay una diferencia del hombre que vive muerto y el hombre que vive sufriendo, y esta segunda cosa es la que padece mi huésped, pues por muchas desgracias que le hayan acaecido en la vida, sólo el que es capaz de conocer la melancolía, es también capaz de discernir entre las cosas bellas y las exánimes, entre las cosas vitales y las cosas inertes y, en definitiva, entre las cosas vivas y las cosas muertas.”
― Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein

“My habitual residence was on the blank and dreary northern shores of the Tay, near Dundee. Blank and dreary in retrospection I call them; but they were not so to me then. They were the eyry of freedom, and the pleasant region where unheeded I could commune with the creatures of my fancy.”
― Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein

“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.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

“(?)
“I do know that for the sympathy of one living being, I would make peace with all. I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine and rage the likes of which you would not believe.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

“My father looked carelessly at the title page of my book, and said, "Ah! Cornelius Agrippa! My dear Victor, do not waste your time upon this; it is sad trash.”
― Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein

“I felt as if I were placed under a ban—as if I had no right to claim their sympathies—as if never more might I enjoy companionship with them. Yet even thus I loved them to adoration; and to save them”
― Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein

“Nada é mais doloroso para a mente humana do que, após uma rápida sucessão de eventos despertar os sentimentos, sentir a calmaria mortal da inação e a certeza que se segue e priva a alma da esperança e do medo.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

“Alas! Victor, when falsehood can look so like the truth, who can assure themselves of certain happiness?”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

“I cannot describe to you the agony that these reflections inflicted upon me; I tried to dispel them, but sorrow only increases with knowledge.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

“...and entered with seeming earnestness into the plans of my father, although they might only serve as the decorations of my tragedy.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

“Wir, die wir ihn so sehr geliebt, betrauern ihn und klagen - er aber ruht in Frieden. [...] So braucht der Tote unser Mitleid nimmer- wir müssen's uns für die bejammernswerten Hinterbliebenen sparen!”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

“If the study to which you apply yourself has a tendency to weaken your affections, and to destroy your taste for those simple pleasures in which no alloy can possibly mix, then that study is certainly unlawful, that is to say, not befitting the human mind.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

“Thus strangely are our souls constructed, and by such slight ligaments are we bound to prosperity or ruin.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

“They congregated round me;the unstained snowy mountain-top, the glittering pinnacle, the pine woods, and ragged bare ravine; the eagle, soaring amidst the clouds—they all gathered round me, and bade me be at peace.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

“knowledge, and the enlargement of intellect, are poor, when unmixed with sentiments of benevolence and sympathy…and science and abstraction will soon become cold, unless they derive new attractions from ideas of society.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

“I will endeavour to resign myself cheerfully to death, and will indulge a hope of meeting you in another world.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

“One man's life or death were but a small price to pay for the acquirement of the knowledge which I sought, for the dominion I should acquire and transmit over the elemental foes of our race.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

“My mother's tender caresses and my father's smile of benevolent pleasure while regarding me are my first recollections. I was their plaything and their idol, and something better - their child, the innocent and helpless creature bestowed on them by heaven, whom to bring up to good, and whose future lot it was in their hands to direct o happiness or misery, according as they fulfilled their duties towards me. With this deep consciousness of what they owed towards the being to which they had given life...”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

“If I have no ties and no affections, hatred and vice must be my portion; the love of another will destroy the cause of my crimes, and I shall become a thing of whose existence every one will be ignorant. My vices are the children of a forced solitude that I abhor; and my virtues will necessarily arise when I live in communion with an equal. I shall feel the affections of a sensitive being, and become linked to the chain of existence and events, from which I am now excluded.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

“Nothing is so powerful to the human mind as a great and sudden change.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

“Yet even that enemy of God and man had friends and associates in his desolation; I am alone.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

“I saw the fish play in the waters as they had done a few hours before; they had then been observed by Elizabeth. Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change. The sun might shine, or the clouds might lour: but nothing could appear to me as it had done the day before.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

“I am malicious because I am miserable”
― Mary Shelley , Frankenstein

“Was man, indeed, at once so powerful, so virtuous and magnificent, yet so vicious and base? He appeared at one time a mere scion of the evil principal and another as all that can be conceived of noble and Godlike. To be a great and virtuous man appeared the highest honor that can befall a sensitive being; to be based and vicious, as many on record have been, appeared the lowest degradation, a condition more object than that of the blind mole or harmless worm. I cannot conceive how one man could go forth to murder his fellow, or even why there were laws and governments; but when I details of advice and bloodshed, my wonder seized, and I turned away with discussed and loathing.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

“A human being in perfection ought always to preserve a calm and peaceful mind, and never allow passion or a transitory desire to disturb his tranquility." - Victor Frankenstein”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

“Thus strangely are our souls constructed, and by such ligaments are we bound to prosperity or ruin." - Victor Frankenstein”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

“For nothing contributes so much to tranquillise the mind as a steady purpose." - Victor Frankenstein”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

“When I run over the frightful catalogue of my sins, I cannot believe that I am the same creature whose thoughts were once filled with sublime and transcendent visions of the beauty and majesty of goodness. But it is even so; the fallen angel becomes the malignant devil. Yet even that enemy of God and man had friends and associates in his desolation; I am alone.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

“Yet he enjoys one comfort, the offspring of solitude and delirium: he believes, that when in dreams he holds converse with his friends, and derives from that communion consolation for his miseries, or excitements to his vengeance, that they are not creations of his fancy, but the beings themselves who visit him from the regions of a remote world. This faith gives a solemnity to his reveries that render them to me almost as imposing and interesting as truth.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein