Quotes · verified word for word in the text
Frankenstein quotes
16 quotes from Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. Source: Project Gutenberg e-text #84 (public domain in the USA), the text this site’s reader shows. Each quote is copied exactly from that text and links to its passage in the reader; when this page was built, every quote was checked word for word against the reader’s text.
Learn from me, if not by my precepts, at least by my example, 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.
I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend. Make me happy, and I shall again be virtuous.
— Spoken by a character · Chapter 10
Beware, for I am fearless and therefore powerful.
— Spoken by a character · Chapter 20
I am malicious because I am miserable.
— Spoken by a character · Chapter 17
Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change.
Life, although it may only be an accumulation of anguish, is dear to me, and I will defend it.
— Spoken by a character · Chapter 10
I will revenge my injuries; if I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear, and chiefly towards you my arch-enemy, because my creator, do I swear inextinguishable hatred.
— Spoken by a character · Chapter 17
I am alone and miserable; man will not associate with me; but one as deformed and horrible as myself would not deny herself to me.
— Spoken by a character · Chapter 16
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.
— Spoken by a character · Chapter 17
The world was to me a secret which I desired to divine.
Live, and be happy, and make others so.
— Spoken by a character · Chapter 8
Remember that I am thy creature; I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel, whom thou drivest from joy for no misdeed.
— Spoken by a character · Chapter 10
To examine the causes of life, we must first have recourse to death.
There is something at work in my soul which I do not understand.
Victor, when falsehood can look so like the truth, who can assure themselves of certain happiness?
— Spoken by a character · Chapter 9
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.
— Spoken by a character · Chapter 24