Frankenstein: or, the Modern Prometheus

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Cornhill Publishing Company, 1922 - Frankenstein (Fictitious character) - 332 pages
 

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Page 46 - Like one that on a lonesome road Doth walk in fear and dread, And having once turned round, walks on, And turns no more his head ; Because he knows a frightful fiend Doth close behind him tread.
Page 216 - For nature then (The coarser pleasures of my boyish days, And their glad animal movements all gone by) To me was all in all. I cannot paint What then I was. The sounding cataract Haunted me like a passion : the tall rock, The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood, Their colours and their forms, were then to me An appetite ; a feeling and a love, That had no need of a remoter charm, By thought supplied, nor any interest Unborrowed from the eye.
Page 329 - I cannot believe that I am the same creature whose thoughts were once filled with sublime and transcendent visions of the beauty and the majesty of goodness. But it is even so ; 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.
Page 113 - We rest — A dream has power to poison sleep ; We rise — One wandering thought pollutes the day ; We feel, conceive or reason, laugh or weep ; Embrace fond woe, or cast our cares away...
Page 42 - IT was on a dreary night of November that I beheld the accomplishment of my toils. With an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, I collected the instruments of life around me, that I might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet.
Page 170 - Accursed creator! 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, fellowdevils, to admire and encourage him; but I am solitary and abhorred.
Page 142 - I had admired the perfect forms of my cottagers - their grace, beauty, and delicate complexions; but how was I terrified when I viewed myself in a transparent pool ! At first I started back, unable to believe that it was indeed I who was reflected in the mirror; and when I became fully convinced that I was in reality the monster that I am, I was filled with the bitterest sensations of despondence and mortification.
Page 43 - The different accidents of life are not so changeable as the feelings of human nature. I had worked hard for nearly two years, for the sole purpose of infusing life into an inanimate body. 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.
Page 117 - I see bliss, from which I alone am irrevocably excluded. I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend. Make me happy, and I shall again be virtuous.
Page 138 - I found that these people possessed a method of communicating their experience and feelings to one another by articulate sounds. I perceived that the words they spoke sometimes produced pleasure or pain, smiles or sadness, in the minds and countenances of the hearers. This was indeed a godlike science, and I ardently desired to become acquainted with it.

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