Chapter 13

• “I now hasten to the more moving part of my story. I shall relate events that impressed me with feelings which, from what I had been, have made me what I am”
• “most beautiful flowers and verdure. My senses were gratified and refreshed by a thousand scents of delight, and a thousand sights of beauty”
• “Her voice was musical but unlike that of either of my friends. (…) I beheld a countenance of angelic beauty and expression.”
• “her eyes were dark, but gentle (…) her features of regular proportion”
• “his sweet Arabian (…) smiles of delight welcomed his Arabian.”
• “I ardently desired to understand them, and bent every faculty towards that purpose”
• “The book from which Felix instructed Safie was Volney’s Ruins of Empires.”
• appeared to have a language of her own
• “these wonderful narrations inspired me with strange feelings. Was man, indeed, at once so powerful, so virtuous and magnificent, yet so vicious and base?”
• She sang, her voice flowed in a rich cadence, swelling or ding away, like a nightingale of the woods.
• I may boast that I improved more rapidly than the Arabian
• “to be a great and virtuous man appeared to the highest honour that can befall a sensitive being”
• “I could not conceive how one man could go forth to murder his fellow, or even why there were laws and governments; but when I heard details of vice and bloodshed, my wonder ceased, and I turned away with disgust and loathing.”
• I heard of the division of property, of immense wealth and squalid poverty; of rank, descent, and noble blood.
• The words induced me to turn towards myself. (…) What was I? Of my creation and creator I was absolutely ignorant; but I knew that I possessed no money, no friends, no kind of property.”
• “When I looked around I saw and heard of none like me. Was I then a monster, a blot upon the earth, from which all men fled, and whom all men disowned?”
• “sorrow only increased with knowledge. Oh that I had forever remained in my native wood, nor known nor felt beyond the sensations of hunger, thirst, and heat!”
• “I learned that there was but one means to overcome the sensation of pain, and that was death – a state which I feared yet did not understand.”
• But where were my friends and relations? No father had watched my infant days, no mother had bless me with smiles and caresses
• in additional love and reverence for my protectors (for so I loved, in an innocent, half-painful self-deceit, to call them)