("Frankenstein")

I didn't realized Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley framed this as a cautionary (劝退) story. Frankenstein's creature really didn't deserve to be treated so shabbily by its creator because he wasn't a looker. And yeah, one more proof "Arrested Development" can be brilliant -- 'Miniaturization has to come later!'

• for nothing contributes so much to tranquillize the mind as a steady purpose—a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye.
• he is as silent as a Turk,
• besides this there is a love for the marvellous, a belief in the marvellous, intertwined in all my projects, which hurries me out of the common pathways of men, even to the wild sea and unvisited regions I am about to explore.
• "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."
• penetration into the causes of things, unequalled for clearness and precision; add to this a facility of expression and a voice whose varied intonations are soul-subduing music.
• You seek for knowledge and wisdom, as I once did; and I ardently hope that the gratification of your wishes may not be a serpent to sting you, as mine has been.
• Strange and harrowing must be his story, frightful the storm which embraced the gallant vessel on its course and wrecked it—thus!
• It may be imagined that while during every hour of my infant life I received a lesson of patience, of charity, and of self-control,
• still my inquiries were directed to the metaphysical, or in its highest sense, the physical secrets of the world.
• Cornelius Agrippa , Paracelsus and Albertus Magnus
• Thus strangely are our souls constructed, and by such slight ligaments are we bound to prosperity or ruin.
• I was required to exchange chimeras of boundless grandeur for realities of little worth.
• the enticements of science. In other studies you go as far as others have gone before you, and there is nothing more to know; but in a scientific pursuit there is continual food for discovery and wonder.
• But this discovery was so great and overwhelming that all the steps by which I had been progressively led to it were obliterated, and I beheld only the result. {How convenient!}/i>
• As the minuteness of the parts formed a great hindrance to my speed, 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 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 tranquillity. I do not think that the pursuit of knowledge is an exception to this rule.
• if no man allowed any pursuit whatsoever to interfere with the tranquillity of his domestic affections, Greece had not been enslaved, Caesar would have spared his country, America would have been discovered more gradually, and the empires of Mexico and Peru had not been destroyed.
• Oh! No mortal could support the horror of that countenance.
• and the change was so rapid, the overthrow so complete!
• A selfish pursuit had cramped and narrowed me.
• I beheld those I loved spend vain sorrow upon the graves of William and Justine, the first hapless victims to my unhallowed arts.
• The wounded deer dragging its fainting limbs to some untrodden brake, there to gaze upon the arrow which had pierced it, and to die, was but a type of me.
• Why does man boast of sensibilities superior to those apparent in the brute; it only renders them more necessary beings. If our impulses were confined to hunger, thirst, and desire, we might be nearly free; but now we are moved by every wind that blows and a chance word or scene that that word may convey to us.
• Life, although it may only be an accumulation of anguish, is dear to me, and I will defend it.
• "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. Everywhere I see bliss, from which I alone am irrevocably excluded. I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend. Make me happy, and I shall again be virtuous."