Chapter 4

• “Two years passed in this manner, during which I paid no visit to Geneva.”
• “how many things are we upon the brink of being acquainted, if cowardice or carelessness did not restrain our inquiries.”
• “Unless I had been animated by an almost supernatural enthusiasm, my application to this study would have been irksome, and almost intolerable.”
• “I must also observe the natural decay and corruption of the human body.”
• “a churchyard was to me merely the receptacle of bodies deprived of life, which, from being the seat of beauty and strength, had become food for the worm.”
• “the stars often disappeared in the light of morning whilst I was yet engaged in my laboratory.”
• My attention was fixed upon every object the most insupportable to the delicacy of the human feelings.
• Remember, I am not recording the visions of a madman.
• After so much time spent in painful labour [...] consummation of my toils.
• I became myself capable of bestowing animation upon lifeless manner [...] delight and rapture.
• “from the midst of this darkness a sudden light broke in upon me – a light so brilliant and wondrous, yet so simple, that while I became dizzy with the immensity of the prospect which it illustrated, I was surprised”
• “I see by your eagerness, and the wonder and hope which your eyes express, my friend, that you expect to be informed of the secret with which I am acquainted; that cannot be”
• “Learn from me, if not by my precepts, at least by example, how dangerous 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 resolved, contrary to my first intention, to make the being of a gigantic stature; that is to say, about eight feet in height, and proportionably large.”
• “A new species would bless me as its creator and source; many happy and excellent natures owe their being to me.
• pour a torrent of light into our dark world.
• “I thought, that if I could bestow animation upon a lifeless matter, I might in the process of time (although I now found it impossible) renew life where death had apparently devoted the body to corruption.”
• “I pursued nature to her hiding places”
• “My limbs now tremble, and my eyes swim with the remembrance; but then a resistless, and almost frantic, impulse urged me forward.”
• “I collected bones from charnel houses, and disturbed, with profane fingers, the tremendous secrets of the human frame.”
• I kept my workshop of filthy creation
• “my eyes were insensible to the charms of nature”
• often did my human nature turn with loathing
• I shunned my fellow-creatures as if I had been guilty of a crime
• “But I forget that I am moralising in the most interesting part of my tale; and your looks remind me to proceed.”
• “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.”