Teach him to think for himself? Oh, my God, teach him rather to think like other people!
Ennui, the demon, waited at the threshold of his noiseless refuge, and drove away the stirring hopes and enlivening expectations, which form the better part of life.
I required kindness and sympathy, but I did not believe myself utterly unworthy of it.
So much has been done, exclaimed the soul of Frankenstein – more, far more, will I achieve; treading in the steps already marked, I will pioneer a new way, explore unknown powers, and unfold to the world the deepest mysteries of creation.
I could not understand why men who knew all about good and evil could hate and kill each other.
I felt emotions of gentleness and pleasure, that had long appeared dead, revive within me. Half surprised by the novelty of these sensations, I allowed myself to be borne away by them, and forgetting my solitude and deformity, dared to be happy.
A mind of moderate capacity which closely pursues one study must infallibly arrive at great proficiency in that study.
Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change. The sun might shine, or the clouds might lour: but nothing could appear to me as it had done the day before.
We are fashioned creatures, but half made up. – Victor Frankenstein.
I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel...
My spirit will sleep in peace; or if it thinks, it will not surely think thus. Farewell.
In other studies you go as far as other have gone before you, and there is nothing more to know; but in a scientific pursuit there is continual food for discovery and wonder.
How mutable are our feelings, and how strange is that clinging love we have of life even in the excess of misery!
The different accidents of life are not so changeable as the feelings of human nature.
There is something at work in my soul, which I do not understand.
Evil thenceforth became my good.
I am not a person of opinions because I feel the counter arguments too strongly.
I am unstable, sometimes melancholy, and have been called on some occasions imperious; but I never did an ungenerous act in my life. I sympathise warmly with others, and have wasted my heart in their love.
Oh! What a miserable night I passed! The cold stars shone in mockery, and the bare trees waved their branches above me; now and then the sweet voice of a bird burst forth amidst the universal stillness. All, save I, were at rest or in enjoyment; I, like the arch-fiend, bore a hell within me, and finding myself unsympathized with, wished to tear up the trees, spread havoc and destruction around me, and then to have sat down and enjoyed the ruin.
If your wish is to become really a man of science and not merely a petty experimentalist, I should advise you to apply to every branch of natural philosophy, including mathematics.