Precious attribute of woe-worn humanity! that can snatch ecstatic emotion, even from under the very share and harrow, that ruthlessly ploughs up and lays waste every hope.
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.
His conversation was marked by its happy abundance.
After days and nights of incredible labor and fatigue, I succeeded in discovering the cause of generation and life. Nay, more, I became myself capable of bestowing animation upon lifeless matter.
What are we, the inhabitants of this globe, least among the many that people infinite space? Our minds embrace infinity; the visible mechanism of our being is subject to merest accident.
The time at length arrives, when grief is rather an indulgence than a necessity and the smile that plays upon the lips, although it may be deemed a sacrilege, is not banished.
Even the eternal skies weep, I thought; is there any shame then, that mortal man should spend himself in tears?
How dreadful it is, to emerge from the oblivion of slumber, and to receive as a good morrow the mute wailing of one’s own hapless heart – to return from the land of deceptive dreams to the heavy knowledge of unchanged disaster!
None but those who have experienced them can conceive of the enticements of science.
Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void, but out of chaos.
We never do what we wish when we wish it, and when we desire a thing earnestly, and it does arrive, that or we are changed, so that we slide from the summit of our wishes and find ourselves where we were.
Her countenance was all expression; her eyes were not dark but impenetrably deep; you seemed to discover space after space in their intellectual glance.
The labours of men of genius, however erroneously directed, scarcely ever fail in ultimately turning to the solid advantage of mankind.
If you will comply with my conditions, I will leave them and you at peace; but if you refuse, I will glut the maw of death, until it be satiated with the blood of your remaining friends.
If our impulses were confined to hunger, thirst, and desire, we might be nearly free; but now we are moved by every wind that blows and a chance word or scene that that word may convey to us.
I see by your eagerness, and the wonder and hope which your eyes express, my friend, that you expect to be in formed of the secret with which I am acquainted. That cannot be.
Satan has his companions, fellow-devils, to admire and encourage him; but I am solitary and detested.
Devil, do you dare approach me? and do you not fear the fierce vengeance of my arm wreaked on your miserable head?
Thus strangely are our souls constructed, and by slight ligaments are we bound to prosperity and ruin.
Solitude was my only consolation – deep, dark, deathlike solitude.