Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
All judges had rather that ten innocent should suffer than that one guilty should escape.
When falsehood can look so like the truth, who can assure themselves of certain happiness?
Polluted by crimes, and torn by the bitterest remorse, where can I find rest but in death?
And the violet lay dead while the odour flew On the wings of the wind o'er the waters blue.
Life, although it may only be an accumulation of anguish, is dear to me, and I will defend it.
I could not understand why men who knew all about good and evil could hate and kill each other.
I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend. Make me happy, and I shall again be virtuous.
Accursed creator! Why did you form a monster so hideous that even you turned from me in disgust?
Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void, but out of chaos.
Satan has his companions, fellow-devils, to admire and encourage him; but I am solitary and detested.
Everything must have a beginning ... and that beginning must be linked to something that went before.
Thus strangely are our souls constructed, and by slight ligaments are we bound to prosperity and ruin.
One man's life or death were but a small price to pay for the acquirement of the knowledge which I sought
But soon, I shall die, and what I now feel be no longer felt. Soon these burning miseries will be extinct.
Solitude becomes a sort of tangible enemy, the more dangerous, because it dwells within the citadel itself.
Even the eternal skies weep, I thought; is there any shame then, that mortal man should spend himself in tears?
What terrified me will terrify others; and I need only describe the spectre which had haunted my midnight pillow.
How mutable are our feelings, and how strange is that clinging love we have of life even in the excess of misery!
Devil, do you dare approach me? and do you not fear the fierce vengeance of my arm wreaked on your miserable head?
The guilty are allowed, by human laws, bloody as they are, to speak in their own defence before they are condemned.
A mind of moderate capacity which closely pursues one study must infallibly arrive at great proficiency in that study.
He is dead who called me into being, and when I shall be no more the very remembrance of us both will speedily vanish.
Poetry, and the principle of Self, of which money is the visible incarnation, are the God and the Mammon of the world.
the sentiment of immediate loss in some sort decayed, while that of utter, irremediable loneliness grew on me with time.
It is true, we shall be monsters, cut off from all the world; but on that account we shall be more attached to one another.
Supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavor to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world.
My dreams were all my own; I accounted for them to nobody; they were my refuge when annoyed - my dearest pleasure when free.
I trembled, and my heart failed within me; when, on looking up, I saw, by the light of the moon, the daemon at the casement.
. . . the companions of our childhood always possess a certain power over our minds which hardly any later friend can obtain.
The moon gazed on my midnight labours, while, with unrelaxed and breathless eagerness, I pursued nature to her hiding places.
With how many things are we on the brink of becoming acquainted, if cowardice or carelessness did not restrain our inquiries.
My father was not scientific, and I was left to struggle with a child's blindness, added to a student's thirst for knowledge.
The agony of my feelings allowed me no respite; no incident occurred from which my rage and misery could not extract its food.
Life and death appeared to me ideal bounds, which I should first break through, and pour a torrent of light into our dark world.
Nothing contributes so much to tranquilize the mind as a steady purpose - a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye.
I saw and heard of none like me. Was I then a monster, a blot upon the earth, from which all men fled, and whom all men disowned?
My candle was nearly burnt out, when, by the glimmer of the half-extinguished light, I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open.
Of what a strange nature is knowledge! It clings to a mind when it has once seized on it like a lichen on a rock." - Frankenstein p115
...if I see but one smile on your lips when we meet, occasioned by this or any other exertion of mine, I shall need no other happiness.
The labours of men of genius, however erroneously directed, scarcely ever fail in ultimately turning to the solid advantage of mankind.
The fallen angel becomes a malignant devil. Yet even that enemy of God and man had friends and associates in his desolation; I am alone.
Look forward to future years, if not with eager anticipation, yet with a calm reliance upon the power of good, wholly remote from despair.
The world to me was a secret, which I desired to discover; to her it was a vacancy, which she sought to people with imaginations of her own.
I leave a sad and bitter world; and if you remember me, and think of me as of one unjustly condemned, I am resigned to the fate awaiting me.
You will rejoice to hear that no disaster has accompanied the commencement of an enterprise which you have regarded with such evil forebodings.
Truly disappointment is the guardian deity of human life; she sits at the threshold of unborn time, and marshals the events as they come forth.
But her's was the misery of innocence, which, like a cloud that passes over the fair moon, for a while hides, but cannot tarnish its brightness.
Invention consists in the capacity of seizing on the capabilities of a subject, and in the power of moulding and fashioning ideas suggested to it.
...once I falsely hoped to meet the beings who, pardoning my outward form, would love me for the excellent qualities which I was capable of unfolding.
Seek happiness in tranquility and avoid ambition even if it be only the apparently innocent one of distinguishing yourself in science and discoveries.