"Frankenstein" by Mary Shelley

Kindle edition here.

• "I felt my heart glow with an enthusiasm which elevates me to heaven, for nothing contributes so much to tranquilize the mind as a steady purpose - a point from on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye."
• "But I have one want which I have never yet been able to satisfy, and the absence of the object of which I now feel as a most severe evil. I have no friend . . .when I am glowing with enthusiasm of success, there will be none to participate my joy; if I am assailed by disappointment, no one will endeavour to sustain me in dejection. I shall commit my thoughts to paper, it is true; but that is a poor medium for the communication of feelings . . . 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."
• "He is so gentle, yet so wise; his mind is so cultivated, and when he speaks, although his words are culled with the choicest art, yet they flow with rapidly and unparalleled eloquence."

• "But when he entered, misery and despair alone welcomed him."
• "(she) possessed a mind of an uncommon mould, and her courage rose to support her in her adversity."
• "There was a sense of justice in my father's upright mind which rendered it necessary that he should approve highly to love strongly."
• "He strove to shelter her, as a fair exotic is sheltered by the gardener, from every rougher wind and to surround her with all that could tend to excite pleasurable emotion in her soft and benevolent mind."
• "Much as they were attached to each other, they seemed to draw inexhaustible stores of affection from a very mine of love to bestow them upon me. 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 to happiness or misery, according as they fulfilled their duties towards me.
• "during every hour of my infant life I received a lesson of patience, of charity, and of self-control"
• "Harmony was the soul of our companionship, and the diversity and contrast that subsided in our characters drew us nearer together."
• "No human being could have passed a happier childhood than myself. My parents were possessed by the very spirit of kindness and indulgence. We felt that they were not the tyrants to rule our lot according to their caprice, but the agents and creators of all the many delights which we enjoyed."
• "the train of my ideas"
• "and I continued to read with the greatest avidity"
• "Destiny was too potent, and her immutable laws had directed my utter and terrible destruction."
• "It is so long before the mind can persuade itself that she whom we saw every day and whose very existence appeared a part of our own can have been extinguished and the sound of a voice so familiar and dear to the ear can be hushed, never more to be heard."
• "I was required to change chimeras of boundless grandeur for realities of little worth."
• "The ancient teachers of this science," said he, "promised impossibilities and performed nothing. The modern masters promise very little; they know that metals cannot be transmuted and that the elixir of life is a chimera. But these philosophers, whose hands seem only made to dabble in dirt, and their eyes to pore over the microscope or crucible, have indeed performed miracles. They penetrate into the recesses of nature and show how she worked in her hiding-places."
• "treading in the steps already marked, I will pioneer a new way"
• "His manners in private were even more mild and attractive than in public"
• "In a thousand ways he smoothed for me the path of knowledge and made the most abstruse inquiries clear and facile to my apprehension."
• "In other studies you go as far as others have gone before you, and there is nothing more to know; but in a scientific pursuit there is a continual food for discovery and wonder."
• "with how many things are we upon the brink of becoming acquainted, if cowardice or carelessness did not restrain our inquiries"
• "To examine the causes of life, we must first have recourse to death."
• "I was like the Arabian who had been buried with the dead and found a passage to life, aided only by one glimmering and seemingly ineffectual light."
• "how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge and how much happier that man who believes his native town to be the world, than he who aspires to become greater than his nature will allow."
• "No one can conceive the variety of feelings which bore me onwards, like a hurricane, in the first enthusiasm of success."
• "my eyes were insensible to the charms of nature"
• "A human being in perfection ought always to preserve a calm and peaceful mind and never to allow passion or transitory desire to disturb his tranquillity. I do not think that the pursuit of knowledge is an exception to this rule."
• "anxiety that almost amounted to agony"
• "The different accidents of life are not so changeable as the feelings of human nature."
• "the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart"
• "I started from my sleep with horror; a cold dew covered my forehead, my teeth chattered, and every limb became convulsed"
• "I passed the night wretchedly. Sometimes my pulse beat so quickly and hardly that I felt the palpitation of every artery; at others, I nearly sank to the ground through languor and extreme weakness. Mingled with this horror, I felt the bitterness of disappointment; dreams that had been my food and pleasant rest for so long a space were now become a hell to me; and the change was so rapid, the overthrow so complete!"
• "endeavouring my bodily exercise to ease the load that weighed upon my mind"
• "I had conceived a violent antipathy . . ."
• "he never attempted to draw my secret from me"
• "I loved him with a mixture of affection and reverence that knew no bounds"
• "although the spring was uncommonly late, when it came its beauty compensated for its dilatoriness"
• "Study had before secluded me from the intercourse of my fellow creatures and rendered me unsocial, but (he) called forth the better feelings of my heart; he again taught me to love the aspect of nature and the cheerful faces of children."
• "inanimate nature had the power of bestowing on me the most delightful sensations"
• "Have I not suffered enough that you seek to increase my misery? Life, although it may only be an accumulation of anguish, is dear to me, and I will defend it."
• "Everywhere I see bliss, from which I am irrevocably excluded."
• "My senses were gratified and refreshed by a thousand scents of delight and a thousand sights of beauty."
• "Of what strange nature is knowledge! It clings to the mind when it has once seized on it like a lichen on the rock. I wished sometimes to shake off all thought and feeling, but I learned that there was but one means to overcome the sensation of pain, and that was death - a state which I feared yet did not understand."
• "I knew that a thousand fearful accidents might occur, the slightest of which would disclose a tale to thrill all connected with me with horror."
• "But in (him) I saw the image of my former self; he was inquisitive and anxious to gain experience and instruction."
• "My present situation was one in which all voluntary thought was swallowed up and lost. I was hurried away by fury; revenge alone endowed me with strength and composure; it moulded my feelings and allowed me to be calculating and calm at periods when otherwise delirium or death would have been my portion."
• "How have I lived I hardly know; many times have I stretched my failing limbs upon the sandy plain and prayed for death. But revenge kept me alive; I dared not die and leave my adversary in being."
• "The spirits of the departed seemed to flit around and to cast a shadow, which was felt but not seen, around the head of the mourner."
• "They were dead, and I lived; their murderer also lived, and to destroy him I must drag out my weary existence."
• "My life, as it passed thus, was indeed hateful to me, and it was during sleep alone that I could taste joy. ... During the day I was sustained and inspirited by the hope of night, for in sleep I saw my friends, my wife, and my beloved country"
• "Seek happiness in tranquillity and avoid ambition, even if it be only the apparently innocent one of distinguishing yourself in science and discoveries."
• "My heart was fashioned to be susceptible of love and sympathy, and when wrenched by misery to vice and hatred, it did not endure the violence of the change without torture such as you cannot even imagine."