Quotes from Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

my first impulses, which had suggested to me the duty of obeying the dying request of my friend, in destroying his enemy, were now suspended by a mixture of curiosity and compassion.

nada contribuye tanto a tranquilizar el espíritu como un propósito firme: un punto en el cual el alma pueda fijar su mirada intelectual.

The monster continued to utter wild and incoherent self-reproaches

El lugar fue mi retiro, y descansé feliz de haber hallado un refugio, por miserable que fuese, para protegerme de la inclemencia de la estación, y aún más de la barbarie del hombre.

I have ten thousand florins a year without Greek, I eat heartily without Greek.

frightful selfishness hurried me on, while my heart was poisoned with remorse.

But revenge kept me alive; I dared not die and leave my adversary in being.

I am, by a course of strange events, become the most miserable of mortals. Persecuted and tortured as I am and have been, can death be any evil to me?

But the latter obtained my undivided attention: wealth was an inferior object; but what glory would attend the discovery, if I could banish disease from the human frame, and render man invulnerable to any but a violent death!

shuddered to think that future ages might curse me as their pest, whose selfishness had not hesitated to buy its own peace at the price perhaps of the existence of the whole human race.

But liberty had been a useless gift to me had I not, as I awakened to reason, at the same time awakened to revenge.

After the murder of Clerval, I returned to Switzerland, heart-broken and overcome. I pitied Frankenstein; my pity amounted to horror: I abhorred myself.

The wretch saw me destroy the creature on whose future existence he depended for happiness, and, with

I feel a cold northern breeze play upon my cheeks, which braces my nerves and fills me with delight. Do you understand this feeling? This breeze, which has traveled from the regions towards which I am advancing, gives me a foretaste of those icy climes. Inspirited by this wind of promise, my daydreams become more fervent and vivid.

Begone! I do break my promise; never will I create another like yourself, equal in deformity and wickedness.

when I discovered that he, the author at once of my existence and of its unspeakable torments, dared to hope for happiness; that while he accumulated wretchedness and despair upon me, he sought his own enjoyment in feelings and passions from the indulgence of which I was for ever barred, then impotent envy and bitter indignation filled me with an insatiable thirst for vengeance. I recollected my threat, and resolved that it should be accomplished. I knew

inuring my body to hardship.

I did not feel much inclined to study the books which I had procured at his recommendation. M. Krempe was a little squat man, with a gruff voice and repulsive countenance; the teacher, therefore, did not prepossess me in favour of his doctrine.

I had a contempt for the uses of modern natural philosophy. It was very different, when the masters of the science sought immortality and power; such views, although futile, were grand: but now the scene was changed. The ambition of the inquirer seemed to limit itself to the annihilation of those visions on which my interest in science was chiefly founded. I was required to exchange chimeras of boundless grandeur for realities of little worth.

Los maestros modernos prometen muy poco. Saben que los metales no pueden transmutarse y que el elixir de la vida es sólo una quimera. Pero estos filósofos, cuyas manos parecen hechas sólo para escarbar en la suciedad y cuyos ojos parecen sólo destinados a escudriñar en el microscopio o en el crisol, en realidad han conseguido milagros.

when she died!—nay, then I was not miserable. I had cast off all feeling, subdued all anguish to riot

These are the reflections of the first days; but when the lapse of time proves the reality of the evil, then the actual bitterness of grief commences.

was at first touched by the expressions of his misery; yet when I called to mind what Frankenstein had said of his powers of eloquence and persuasion, and when I again cast my eyes on the lifeless form of my friend, indignation was re-kindled within me. "Wretch!" I said

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 principle, and at another as all that can be conceived of noble and godlike.