100+ Profound Quotes from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
Frankenstein, penned by the brilliant Mary Shelley, remains a compelling literary classic that enthralls readers with its intricate examination of the depths of human ambition, the essence of existence, and the moral dilemmas that accompany scientific exploration. This seminal work not only helps define the Gothic genre but also serves as a rich source of reflection on the human condition. The quotes from Frankenstein have resonated through the ages, inspiring countless individuals to ponder the complexities of life. From inspirational quotes that uplift the spirit to darker musings that probe the depths of despair, this novel offers a treasure trove of wisdom. Join us as we delve into a curated selection of the most impactful quotes from Frankenstein, a collection that highlights the timeless relevance and emotional resonance found within its pages.
- “Beware; for I am fearless, and therefore powerful.” – The Creature
- “I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel.” – The Creature
- “Life, although it may only be an accumulation of anguish, is dear to me, and I will defend it.” – The Creature
- “I am malicious because I am miserable.” – The Creature
- “Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change.” – Victor Frankenstein
- “I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend.” – The Creature
- “If I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear!” – The Creature
- “What can stop the determined heart and resolved will of man?” – Victor Frankenstein
- “We are unfashioned creatures, but half made up.” – Victor Frankenstein
- “You are my creator, but I am your master; obey!” – The Creature
- “I had worked hard for nearly two years, for the sole purpose of infusing life into an inanimate body.” – Victor Frankenstein
- “How mutable are our feelings, and how strange is that clinging love we have of life even in the excess of misery!” – Victor Frankenstein
- “There is something at work in my soul which I do not understand.” – Victor Frankenstein
- “The fallen angel becomes a malignant devil.” – The Creature
- “Seek happiness in tranquility and avoid ambition.” – Victor Frankenstein
- “The world was to me a secret which I desired to divine.” – Victor Frankenstein
- “I bitterly feel the want of a friend.” – Robert Walton
- “The companions of our childhood always possess a certain power over our minds which hardly any later friend can obtain.” – Victor Frankenstein
- “Man,” I cried, “how ignorant art thou in thy pride of wisdom!” – Victor Frankenstein
- “Learn from me, if not by my precepts, at least by my example, how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge.” – Victor Frankenstein
- “Nothing contributes so much to tranquillize the mind as a steady purpose.” – Robert Walton
- “A human being in perfection ought always to preserve a calm and peaceful mind.” – Victor Frankenstein
- “The different accidents of life are not so changeable as the feelings of human nature.” – Victor Frankenstein
- “Am I not shunned and hated by all mankind?” – The Creature
- “There is love in me the likes of which you’ve never seen.” – The Creature
- “But success shall crown my endeavours.” – Victor Frankenstein
- “You seek for knowledge and wisdom, as I once did.” – Victor Frankenstein
- “Unhappy man! Do you share my madness?” – Victor Frankenstein
- “I was cursed by some devil and carried about with me my eternal hell.” – Victor Frankenstein
- “My spirit will sleep in peace; or if it thinks, it will not surely think thus.” – Victor Frankenstein
- “I am alone and miserable; man will not associate with me.” – The Creature
- “Sorrow only increased with knowledge.” – The Creature
- “The world to me was a secret which I desired to divine.” – Victor Frankenstein
- “Do not return to your families with the stigma of disgrace marked on your brows.” – Victor Frankenstein
- “What a glorious creature must he have been in the days of his prosperity!” – Victor Frankenstein
- “I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine.” – The Creature
- “You can blast my other passions, but revenge remains.” – The Creature
- “A truce to these idle threats!” – Victor Frankenstein
- “I will glut the maw of death, until it be satiated with the blood of your remaining friends.” – The Creature
- “I feel my heart glow with an enthusiasm which elevates me to heaven.” – Victor Frankenstein
- “I, who irretrievably destroyed thee by destroying all thou lovedst.” – Victor Frankenstein
- “Accursed creator! Why did you form a monster so hideous that even you turned from me in disgust?” – The Creature
- “When I looked around, I saw and heard of none like me.” – The Creature
- “I am alone and miserable; only someone as ugly as I am could love me.” – The Creature
- “I will revenge my injuries; if I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear.” – The Creature
- “He had escaped me, and I must commence a destructive and almost endless journey across the mountainous ices of the ocean.” – The Creature
- “Oh! Be men, or be more than men. Be steady to your purposes and firm as a rock.” – Robert Walton
- “Am I to be thought the only criminal, when all humankind sinned against me?” – The Creature
- “It is true, we shall be monsters, cut off from all the world; but on that account, we shall be more attached to one another.” – The Creature
- “The die is cast; I have consented to return if we are not destroyed.” – Robert Walton
- “The sight of the awful and majestic in nature had indeed always the effect of solemnising my mind.” – Victor Frankenstein
- “I am satisfied: miserable wretch! You have determined to live, and I am satisfied.” – Victor Frankenstein
- “Blasted as thou wert, my agony was still superior to thine.” – Victor Frankenstein
- “Man does not yet know the utilities of life; he is like the savage who finds a watch and thinks it a toy.” – Victor Frankenstein
- “No creature could have more tender parents than mine.” – Victor Frankenstein
- “Do your duty towards me, and I will do mine towards you and the rest of mankind.” – The Creature
- “I have murdered the lovely and the helpless.” – The Creature
- “You can no longer suffer because I have killed all those whom you loved.” – The Creature
- “You throw a torch into a pile of buildings; and when they are consumed, you sit among the ruins, and lament the fall.” – Victor Frankenstein
- “Oh, stars and clouds and winds, ye are all about to mock me.” – Victor Frankenstein
- “Even broken in spirit as he is, no one can feel more deeply than he does the beauties of nature.” – Robert Walton
- “The guilty are allowed, by human laws, bloody as they are, to speak in their own defense before they are condemned.” – Victor Frankenstein
- “I do know that for the sympathy of one living being, I would make peace with all.” – The Creature
- “I had resolved in my own mind that to create another like the fiend I had first made would be an act of the basest and most atrocious selfishness.” – Victor Frankenstein
- “I am chained in an eternal hell.” – Victor Frankenstein
- “It is well. I go; but remember, I shall be with you on your wedding-night.” – The Creature
- “Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay to mould me Man?” – The Creature
- “A new species would bless me as its creator and source.” – Victor Frankenstein
- “I looked upon the sea; it was to be my grave.” – Victor Frankenstein
- “Satan had his companions, fellow-devils, to admire and encourage him; but I am solitary and abhorred.” – The Creature
- “I shall collect my funeral pile and consume to ashes this miserable frame.” – The Creature
- “I wished to express my sensations in my own mode, but the uncouth and inarticulate sounds which broke from me frightened me into silence again.” – The Creature
- “I will be with you on your wedding-night.” – The Creature
- “Learn from my miseries and do not seek to increase your own.” – Victor Frankenstein
- “How dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world.” – Victor Frankenstein
- “I will pioneer a new way, explore unknown powers, and unfold to the world the deepest mysteries of creation.” – Victor Frankenstein
- “I expressed these feelings in my answer. I thank you,” I replied, “for your sympathy, but it is useless.” – Victor Frankenstein
- “I may die, but first you, my tyrant and tormentor, shall curse the sun that gazes on your misery.” – The Creature
- “Thus I might proclaim myself king of the world.” – Victor Frankenstein
- “The only joy that I can imagine will be when I hear of your death.” – The Creature
- “Thus are my hopes blasted by cowardice and indecision; I come back ignorant and disappointed.” – Robert Walton
- “I shall ascend my funeral pile triumphantly and exult in the agony of the torturing flames.” – The Creature
- “You have destroyed the work which you began; what is it that you intend?” – The Creature
- “I was cursed by some devil and carried about with me my eternal hell.” – Victor Frankenstein
- “Oh! My creator, make me happy; let me feel gratitude towards you for one benefit!” – The Creature
- “I confess, my son, that I have always looked forward to your marriage with our dear Elizabeth as the tie of our domestic comfort.” – Alphonse Frankenstein
- “I cannot describe to you the agony that these reflections inflicted upon me.” – Victor Frankenstein
- “I am an unfortunate and deserted creature; I look around and I have no relation or friend upon earth.” – The Creature
- “You have read this strange and terrific story, Margaret; do you not feel your blood congeal with horror, like that which even now curdles mine?” – Robert Walton
- “Let me go; my fate is nearly fulfilled.” – Victor Frankenstein
- “Remember that I am thy creature; I ought to be thy Adam; but I am rather the fallen angel.” – The Creature
- “I felt emotions of gentleness and pleasure, that had long appeared dead, revive within me.” – The Creature
- “I am satisfied that you have determined to live, and I am satisfied.” – Victor Frankenstein
- “I often took his tools, the use of which I quickly discovered, and brought home firing sufficient for the consumption of several days.” – The Creature
- “I am by no means indifferent to the manner in which whatever moral tendencies exist in the sentiments or characters it contains shall affect the reader.” – Mary Shelley (Preface)
- “He had escaped me, and I must commence a destructive and almost endless journey across the mountainous ices of the ocean.” – The Creature
- “You can blast my other passions, but revenge remains—revenge, henceforth dearer than light or food!” – The Creature
- “All men hate the wretched; how, then, must I be hated, who am miserable beyond all living things!” – The Creature
- “You must create a female for me with whom I can live in the interchange of those sympathies necessary for my being.” – The Creature
- “How can I describe my emotions at this catastrophe, or how delineate the wretch whom with such infinite pains and care I had endeavoured to form?” – Victor Frankenstein
- “Do not despair; 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.” – The Creature
- “Am I to be thought the only criminal, when all humankind sinned against me?” – The Creature
- “This noble war in the sky elevated my spirits; I clasped my hands, and exclaimed aloud, ‘William, dear angel! This is thy funeral, this thy dirge!’” – Victor Frankenstein
- “I shall satiate my ardent curiosity with the sight of a part of the world never before visited, and may tread a land never before imprinted by the foot of man.” – Robert Walton
- “These bleak skies I hail, for they are kinder to me than your fellow-beings.” – The Creature
- “I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel.” – The Creature
- “He is eloquent and persuasive, and once his words had even power over my heart; but trust him not.” – Victor Frankenstein
- “This was indeed a godlike science, and I ardently desired to become acquainted with it.” – Victor Frankenstein
- “I never saw a man in so wretched a condition.” – Robert Walton
- “I was dependent on none and related to none.” – The Creature
- “I heard of the discovery of the structure of the human frame and, still more, of the great secret of life.” – Victor Frankenstein
- “Your repentance is now superfluous. If you had listened to the voice of conscience and heeded the stings of remorse before you had urged your diabolical vengeance to this extremity, Frankenstein would yet have lived.” – Robert Walton
- “The summer months passed while I was thus engaged, heart and soul, in one pursuit.” – Victor Frankenstein
- “There is an expression of despair, and sometimes of revenge, in your countenance, that makes me tremble.” – Robert Walton
- “Revenge alone endowed me with strength and composure.” – The Creature
- “You accuse me of murder, and yet you would, with a satisfied conscience, destroy your own creature.” – The Creature
- “The guilty are allowed, by human laws, bloody as they may be, to speak in their own defense before they are condemned.” – Victor Frankenstein
- “Was man, indeed, at once so powerful, so virtuous, and magnificent, yet so vicious and base?” – The Creature
- “During the whole of this wretched mockery of justice I suffered living torture.” – Victor Frankenstein
- “I was a poor, helpless, miserable wretch; I knew, and could distinguish, nothing; but feeling pain invade me on all sides, I sat down and wept.” – The Creature
