Frankenstein
"Destiny was too potent, and her immutable laws had decreed my utter and terrible destruction."
"It is so long before the mind can persuade itself that she whom we saw every day and whose very existence appeared a part of our own can have departed forever -- that the brightness of a beloved eye can have been extinguished and the sound of a voice so familiar and dear to the ear can be hushed, never more to be heard."
"ardently desired the acquisition of knowledge."
"I was required to exchange chimeras of boundless grandeur for realities of little worth."
"how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world, than he who aspires to become greater than his nature will allow."
"If the study to which you apply yourself has a tendency to weaken your affections and to destroy your taste for those simple pleasures in which no alloy can possibly mix, then that study is certainly unlawful, that is to say, not befitting the human mind."
"but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and the breathless horror and disgust filled my heart."
"dreams that had been my food and pleasant rest for so long a space were now become a hell to me; and the change was so rapid, the overthrow so complete!"
"Man’s yesterday may ne’er be like his morrow; Nought may endure but mutability!"
"Life, although it may only be an accumulation of anguish, is dear to me, and I will defend it."
"Was man, indeed, at once so powerful, so virtuous and magnificent, yet so vicious and base?"
"Of what a strange nature is knowledge! It clings to the mind when it has once seized on it like a lichen on the rock. I wished sometimes to shake off all thought and feeling, but I learned that there was but one means to overcome the sensation of pain, and that was death—"
"Why did you form a monster so hideous that even you turned from me in disgust? God, in pity, made man beautiful and alluring, after his own image; but my form is a filthy type of yours, more horrid even from the very resemblance. Satan had his companions, fellow devils, to admire and encourage him, but I am solitary and abhorred."
"Increase of knowledge only discovered to me more clearly what a wretched outcast I was."
"To be friendless is indeed to be unfortunate, but the hearts of men, when unprejudiced by any obvious self-interest, are full of brotherly love and charity."
"I had saved a human being from destruction, and as a recompense I now writhed under the miserable pain of a wound which shattered the flesh and bone."
"all joy was but a mockery which insulted my desolate state and made me feel more painfully that I was not made for the enjoyment of pleasure."
"I am malicious because I am miserable."
"if I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear, and chiefly towards you my archenemy, because my creator, do I swear inextinguishable hatred."
"'Slave, I before reasoned with you, but you have proved yourself unworthy of my condescension. Remember that I have power; you believe yourself miserable, but I can make you so wretched that the light of day will be hateful to you. You are my creator, but I am your master; obey!'"
"Of what materials was I made that I could thus resist so many shocks, which, like the turning of the wheel, continually renewed the torture? But I was doomed to live"
"The cup of life was poisoned forever, and although the sun shone upon me, as upon the happy and gay of heart, I saw around me nothing but a dense and frightful darkness, penetrated by no light but the glimmer of two eyes that glared upon me."
"But revenge kept me alive; I dared not die and leave my adversary in being."
"'I am satisfied, miserable wretch! You have determined to live, and I am satisfied.'"
"Seek happiness in tranquility and avoid ambition,"
"'...Evil thenceforth became my good. Urged thus far, I had no choice but to adapt my nature to an element which I had willingly chosen. The completion of my demoniacal design became an insatiable passion. And now it is ended; there is my last victim!'"
"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."