"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."

"Reflections on War and Death" by Sigmund Freud

Kindle edition here.

• "Caught in the whirlwind of these war times"
• "It would seem as though no event had ever destroyed so much of the precious heritage of mankind, confused so many of the clearest intellects or so thoroughly debased what is highest."
• "Even science has lost her dispassionate impartiality. Her deeply embittered votaries are intent upon seizing her weapons to do their share in the battle against the enemy."
• "The anthropologist has to declare his opponent inferior and degenerate, the psychiatrist must diagnose him as mentally deranged."
• "One need not be a sentimentalist, one may realize the biological and physiological necessity of suffering in the economy of human life, and yet one may condemn the methods and the aims of war and long for its termination."

"The Schopenhauer Cure" by Irvin Yalom

Kindle edition and Paperback.

• "Live your life to the fullest; and then, and only then, die. Don't leave any unlived life behind."
• "he knew exactly what to do and how to spend his final year. He would live just the way he had lived the previous year - and the year before that and before that. (He loved being a therapist; he loved connecting to others and helping to bring something to life in them.)"
•  "A curious thought experiment. . . Nietzsche's message to us was to live life in such a way that we would be willing to repeat the same life eternally."

"Cat's Cradle" by Kurt Vonnegut

Kindle edition and paperback.

• "People have to talk about something just to keep their voice boxes in working order, so they'll have good voice boxes in case there's ever anything really meaningful to say."
• "The brainless serenity of charwomen and janitors working late at night came over us. In a messy world we were at least making our little corner clean."
• "Americans are forever searching for love in forms it never takes, in places it can never be."
• "You're looking at the world's champion mistakemaker"
• "All the true things I am about to tell you are shameless lies."
• "Anyone unable to understand how a useful religion can be found on lies, will not understant this book either."