Chapters 3 and 4 Quotes (Frankenstein): Flashcards
“this best of women did not desert her”
“the first misfortune of my life occurred - an omen, as it were, of my future misery”
“My children […] my firmest hopes of future happiness were placed on the prospect of your union”
“Elizabeth, you must supply my place”
“the despair that is exhibited on the countenance”
“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”
“when grief is rather an indulgence than a necessity” / “My mother was dead, but we had still duties which we ought to perform”
“She indeed veiled her grief, and strove to act the comforter to us all” / “never was she so enchanting as at this time”
“I was now alone”
“I ardently desired the acquisition of knowledge”
“the Angel of Destruction, which asserted omnipotent sway over me..”
“have indeed performed miracles” / “they ascend into the heavens” / “they have acquired new and almost unlimited powers”
“As he went on, I felt as if my soul were grappling with a palpable enemy” / “So much has been done [..] more, far more, will I achieve” / “I will pioneer a new way, explore unknown powers, and unfold to the world the deepest mysteries of creation”
“I am happy” / “to have gained a disciple”
“he smoothed for me the path of knowledge”
“but was engaged, heart and soul, in the pursuit of some discoveries”
“none but those who have experienced them can conceive the enticements of science”
“yet with how many things are we upon the brink of becoming acquainted, if cowardice and carelessness did not restrain our inquiries”
“unless I had been animated by an almost supernatural enthusiasm […] I would have been irksome, and almost intolerable”
“I must also observe the natural decay and corruption of the human body” / “darkness had no effect upon my fancy” / “I beheld the corruption of death succeed to the blooming cheek of life”
“I was like the Arabian who had been buried with the dead, and found a passage to life, aided only by one glimmering and seemingly ineffectual, light.”
“I see by your eagerness” / “listen patiently until the end of my story” - a reminder that Walton is still listening, this is Victor reflecting.
“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”
“No one can conceive the variety of feelings which bore on me onwards, like a hurricane”
“Life and death appeared to me ideal bounds, which I should first break through, and pour a torrent of light into our dark world” / “no father could claim the gratitude of his child so completely as I should deserve theirs”
“I dabbled among the unhallowed damps of the grave, or tortured the living animal”
“I seemed to have lost all soul or sensation but for this one pursuit”
“and often did my human nature turn with loathing from my occupation”
“and the same feelings which made me neglect the scenes around me caused me also to forget those friends who were so many miles absent”
“I could not tear my thoughts from my employment, loathsome in itself, but which had taken an irresistible hold of my imagination”
“If the study to which you apply yourself has a tendency to weaken your affections” […] / “then that study is certainly unlawful” (Victor disagrees with this)
“I did not watch the blossom or expanding leaves - sights which before always yielded me supreme delight - so deeply was I engrossed in my occupation”
“oppressed by a slow fever / nervous to a most painful degree”
“I shunned my fellow-creatures as if I had been guilty of a crime”
