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Frankenstein: The 1818 Text

Book by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley · 7 quotes · Frankenstein, Humanity, Life

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Frankenstein: The 1818 Text Quotes

“I was often tempted, when all was at peace around me, and I the only unquiet thing that wandered so restless in a scene so beautiful and heavenly, if I except some bat, or frogs, whose harsh and interrupted croaking was heard only when I approached the shore - often, I say, was tempted to plunge into the silent lake, that the waters might close over me and my calamities forever.”

“I had admired the perfect forms of my cottagers—their grace, beauty, and delicate complexions; but how was I terrified when I viewed myself in a transparent pool! At first I started back, unable to believe that it was indeed I who was reflected in the mirror; and when I became fully convinced that I was in reality the monster that I am, I was filled with the bitterest sensations of despondence and mortification. Alas! I did not yet entirely know the fatal effects of this miserable deformity.”

“Oh, Frankenstein, be not equitable to every other, and trample upon me alone, to whom thy justice, or even thy clemency and affection, is most due. Remember that I am thy creature: I ought to be thy Adam,; but I am rather the fallen angel, whom thou drivest from joy for no misdeed. Every where I see bliss, from which I alone am irrevocably excluded. I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend. Make me happy, and I shall again be virtuous.”

“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. If this rule were always observed; if no man allowed any pursuit whatsoever to interfere with the tranquility of his domestic affections, Greece had not been enslaved; Caeser would have spared his country; America would have been discovered more gradually; and the empires of Mexico and Peru had not been destroyed.”