Quotes from Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Sometimes I endeavoured to gain from Frankenstein the particulars of his creature's formation; but on this point he was impenetrable.

Hateful day when I received life!' I exclaimed in agony. 'Cursed creator! Why did you form a monster so hideous that even you turned from me in disgust? God in pity made man beautiful and alluring, after his own image; but my form is a filthy type of your's, more horrid from its very resemblance. Satan had his companions, fellow-devils, to admire and encourage him; but I am solitary and detested.

Nothing is more painful to the human mind, than, after the feelings have 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.

many hard and miserable hours must you endure, until that period shall arrive.

Was there no injustice in this? Am I to be thought the only criminal, when all humankind sinned against me? Why do you not hate Felix, who drove his friend from his door with contumely? Why do you not execrate the rustic who sought to destroy the saviour of his child? Nay, these are virtuous and immaculate beings! I, the miserable and the abandoned, am an abortion, to be spurned at, and kicked, and trampled on. Even now my blood boils at the recollection of this injustice.

At first, as the memory of former happiness contrasted to my present despair came across me

Prepare! your toils only begin: wrap yourself in furs, and provide food, for we shall

soon enter upon a journey where your sufferings will satisfy my everlasting hatred

Peace, peace! learn my miseries, and do not seek to increase your own.

Viva, sea feliz y haga felices a los demás.

Some weeks before this period I had procured a sledge and dogs, and thus traversed the snows with inconceivable speed.

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 the creations of his fancy, but the real beings who visit him from the regions of a remote world.

miserable, so destitute of every hope of consolation, to live?

In a fit of enthusiastic madness I created a rational creature, and was bound towards him, to assure, as far as was in my power, his happiness and well-being. This was my duty

On every point of general literature he displays unbounded knowledge, and a quick and piercing apprehension. His eloquence is forcible and touching;

After a slight repose, during which the spirits of the dead hovered round, and instigated me to toil and revenge, I prepared for my journey.

All my speculations and hopes are as nothing; and, like the archangel who aspired to omnipotence, I am chained in an eternal hell.

I trod heaven in my thoughts, now exulting in my powers, now burning with the idea of their effects.

That is also my victim!" he exclaimed; "in his murder my crimes are consummated; the miserable series of my being is wound to its close! Oh, Frankenstein! generous and self-devoted being! what does it avail that I now ask thee to pardon me? I, who irretrievably destroyed thee by destroying all thou lovedst. Alas! he is cold; he may not answer me.

An open and capacious forehead gave indications of a good understanding, joined to great frankness of disposition.

when the masters of the science sought immortality and power; such views, although futile, were grand:

I indeed perceptibly gained on it; and when, after nearly two days' journey, I beheld my enemy at no more than a mile distant, my heart bounded within me.

Por qué presume el hombre de tener más sensibilidad que las bestias? Eso sólo los convierte en seres más necesitados.

And I call on you, spirits of the dead; and on you, wandering ministers of vengeance, to aid and conduct me in my work. Let the cursed and hellish monster drink deep of agony; let him feel the despair that now torments me.