Maria

“Increase of knowledge only discovered to me more clearly what a wretched outcast I was. I cherished hope, it is true, but it vanished when I beheld my person reflected in water or my shadow in the moonshine, even as that frail image and that inconstant shade.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

“It was the secrets of heaven and earth that I desired to learn; and whether it was the outward substance of things or the inner spirit of nature and the mysterious soul of man that occupied me, still my inquiries were directed to the metaphysical, or in its highest sense, the physical secrets of the world.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

“if I see but one smile on your lips when we meet, occasioned by this or any other exertion of mine, I shall need no other happiness.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

“I wished sometimes to shake off all thought and feeling, but 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.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein