I saw -- with shut eyes, but acute mental vision -- I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life, and stir with an uneasy, half-vital motion.

Ah! it is well for the unfortunate to be resigned, but for the guilty there is no peace.

Solitude was my only consolation - deep, dark, deathlike solitude.

Once a king ... it was impossible, without risk of life, to sink to a private station.

There is something at work in my soul which I do not understand. I am practically industrious - painstaking, a workman to execute with perseverance and labour - but 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.

Everything must have a beginning ... and that beginning must be linked to something that went before.

I could not understand why men who knew all about good and evil could hate and kill each other.