Mary Shelley Zitate

seite 3

„Einsamkeit war mein einziger Trost – dunkle, tiefe, totengleiche Einsamkeit.“

„In Acht nehmen; denn ich bin furchtlos und darum mächtig.“

„Verfluchter Schöpfer! Warum hast du ein Monster gebildet, das so abscheulich ist, dass selbst du dich angewidert von mir abgewandt hast?“

„Ich erblickte das scheußliche Phantasma eines ausgestreckten Menschen, der dann, durch das Wirken einer mächtigen Maschine, Lebenszeichen von sich gab und sich mit einer unruhigen, halb lebendigen Bewegung rührte. Entsetzlich muss es sein; denn äußerst entsetzlich wäre die Wirkung jedes menschlichen Versuchs, den erstaunlichen Mechanismus des Schöpfers der Welt zu verspotten.“

„Zwar werde ich meine Gedanken zu Papier bringen, aber das ist ein unzulängliches Medium für die Mitteilung von Gefühlen.“

„Nichts ist für den menschlichen Geist so schmerzhaft wie eine große und plötzliche Veränderung.“

„Lerne aus meinen Fehlern, anstatt deine zu vermehren.“

„Vor einigen Jahren, als die Bilder, die diese Welt bietet, sich mir zum ersten Mal auftaten, als ich die beglückende Wärme des Sommers spürte und das Rascheln der Blätter und das Zwitschern der Vögel hörte und das alles für mich war, hätte ich mich zu Tode weinen sollen; nun ist es mein einziger Trost.“

“A human being in perfection ought always to preserve a calm and peaceful mind and never to allow passion or a transitory desire to disturb his tranquility.”

“I feel exquisite pleasure in dwelling on the recollections of childhood, before misfortune had tainted my mind, and changed its bright visions of extensive usefulness into gloomy and narrow reflections upon self.”

“I was seized by remorse and the sense of guilt, which hurried me away to a hell of intense tortures as no language can describe”

“I see by your eagerness, and the wonder and hope which your eyes express, my friend, that you expect to be in formed of the secret with which I am acquainted. That cannot be.”

“My spirit will sleep in peace, or if it thinks, it will not surely think thus. Farewell.”

“What can stop the determined heart and resolved will of man?”

“I shall commit my thoughts to paper, it is true; but that is a poor medium for the communication of feeling. I desire the company of a man who could sympathize with me, whose eyes would reply to mine.”

“I felt emotions of gentleness and pleasure, that had long appeared dead, revive within me. Half surprised by the novelty of these sensations, I allowed myself to be borne away by them, and forgetting my solitude and deformity, dared to be happy.”

“I also became a poet, and for one year lived in a Paradise of my own creation; I imagined that I also might obtain a niche in the temple where the names of Homer and Shakespeare are consecrated.”

“Be men, or be more than men. Be steady to your purposes and firm as a rock. This ice is not made of such stuff as your hearts may be; it is mutable and cannot withstand you if you say that it shall not.”

“We are fashioned creatures, but half made up.”

“Unhappy man! Do you share my maddness? Have you drunk also of the intoxicating draught? Hear me; let me reveal my tale, and you will dash the cup from your lips!”

“Her countenance was all expression; her eyes were not dark but impenetrably deep; you seemed to discover space after space in their intellectual glance.”

“Seek happiness in tranquility and avoid ambition even if it be only the apparently innocent one of distinguishing yourself in science and discoveries.”

“I love man as my fellow; but his scepter, real, or usurped, extends not to me, unless the reason of an individual demands my homage; and even then the submission is to reason, and not to man.”

“One wondering thought pollutes the day”

“As a child I scribbled; and my favourite pastime, during the hours given me for recreation, was to "write stories." Still I had a dearer pleasure than this, which was the formation of castles in the air—the indulging in waking dreams—the following up trains of thought, which had for their subject the formation of a succession of imaginary incidents. My dreams were at once more fantastic and agreeable than my writings.”

“We are unfashioned creatures, but half made up, if one wiser, better, dearer than ourselves — such a friend ought to be — do not lend his aid to perfectionate our weak and faulty natures.”

“So much has been done, exclaimed the soul of Frankenstein — more, far more, will I achieve; treading in the steps already marked, I will pioneer a new way, explore unknown powers, and unfold to the world the deepest mysteries of creation.”

“The last man! Yes I may well describe that solitary being's feelings, feeling myself as the last relic of a beloved race, my companions extinct before me…”

“My person was hideous and my stature gigantic. What did this mean? Who was I? What was I? Whence did I come? What was my destination? These questions continually recurred, but I was unable to solve them.”

“The idea so possessed my mind, that a thrill of fear ran through me, and I wished to exchange the ghastly image of my fancy for the realities around. I see them still; the very room, the dark parquet, the closed shutters, with the moonlight struggling through, and the sense I had that the glassy lake and white high Alps were beyond.”

“My food is not that of man; I do not destroy the lamb and the kid to glut my appetite; acorns and berries afford me sufficient nourishment. My companion will be of the same nature as myself and will be content with the same fare. We shall make our bed of dried leaves; the sun will shine on us as on man and will ripen our food. The picture I present to you is peaceful and human, and you must feel that you could deny it only in the wantonness of power and cruelty.”

“I shall thus give a general answer to the question, so frequently asked me—"How I, then a young girl, came to think of, and to dilate upon, so very hideous an idea?"”

“I busied myself to think of a story, — a story to rival those which had excited us to this task. One which would speak to the mysterious fears of our nature, and awaken thrilling horror—one to make the reader dread to look round, to curdle the blood, and quicken the beatings of the heart. If I did not accomplish these things, my ghost story would be unworthy of its name.”

“What terrified me will terrify others; and I need only describe the spectre which had haunted my midnight pillow.”

“Lord Byron, who was writing the third canto of Childe Harold, was the only one among us who put his thoughts upon paper. These, as he brought them successively to us, clothed in all the light and harmony of poetry, seemed to stamp as divine the glories of heaven and earth, whose influences we partook with him.”

“One thing I will add: if I have ever found kindness, it has not been from Liberals; to disengage myself from them was the first act of my freedom.”

“At the age of twenty six I am in the condition of an aged person — all my old friends are gone … & my heart fails when I think by how few ties I hold to the world….”