I postponed this attempt for some months longer; for the importance attached to its success inspired me with a dread lest I shall fail.
I would reconcile him to life, but he repulses the idea.
Frankenstein! you belong then to my enemy – to him towards whom I have sworn eternal revenge; you shall be my first victim.
You are in the wrong,” replied the fiend; “and, instead of threatening, I am content to reason with you.
One by one, her brothers and sister died; and her mother, with the exception of her neglected daughter, was left childless. The conscience of the woman was troubled; she began to think that the deaths of her favourites was a judgement from heaven to chastise her partiality. She was a Roman.
I shuddered when I thought of the possible consequences of my consent; but I felt that there was some justice in his argument.
I swear to you, by the earth which I inhabit, and by you that made me, that, with the companion you bestow, I will quit the neighbourhood of man, and dwell, as it may chance, in the most savage of places.
But it is even so; the fallen angel becomes a malignant devil.
The choice is with us; let us will it, and our habitation becomes a paradise. For the will of man is omnipotent, blunting the arrows of death, soothing the bed of disease, and wiping away the tears of agony.
I have but one passion ; it swallows up every other ; it dwells with my darling books, and is fed by the treasures of beauty and wisdom which they contain.
I am sorry that I am alive to feel this misery and horror.
I am full of fears; for if I fail there, I am an outcast in the world for ever.
His power and threats were not omitted in my calculations:.
Perhaps we did not read so many books, or learn languages so quickly, as those who are disciplined according to the ordinary methods; but what we learned was impressed the more deeply on our memories.
I desire the company of a man who could sympathize with me; whose eyes would reply to mine. You may deem me romantic, my dear sister, but I bitterly feel the want of a friend. 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.
Oh! be men, or be more than men. Be steady to your purposes, and firm as a rock.
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.
When one creature is murdered, another is immediately deprived of life in a slow, torturing manner; then the executioners, their hands yet reeking with the blood of innocence, believe that they have done a great deed. They call this retribution. Hateful name! When that word is pronounced, I know greater and more horrid punishments are going to be inflicted than the gloomiest tyrant has ever invented to satiate his utmost revenge.
You hate me; but your abhorrence cannot equal that with which I regard myself. I look on the hands which executed the deed; I think on the heart in which the imagination of it was conceived, and long for the moment when they will meet my eyes, when it haunt my thoughts, no more.
For this I had deprived myself of rest and health. I had desired it with an ardour that far exceeded moderation; but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart.