A Dark and Stormy Night

The la­bours I en­dured were no longer to be al­le­vi­ated by the bright sun or gentle breezes of spring; all joy was but a mock­ery, which in­sul­ted my des­ol­ate state, and made me feel more pain­fully that I was not made for the en­joy­ment of pleas­ure.

Noth­ing is so pain­ful to the hu­man mind as a great and sud­den change.

the whole train of my pro­gress to­wards the cre­ation; the ap­pear­ance of the work of my own hands alive at my bed­side; its de­par­ture.

I was a poor, help­less, miser­able wretch; I knew, and could dis­tin­guish, noth­ing; but feel­ing pain in­vade me on all sides, I sat down and wept.

serpent to sting you,

he might sleep in the be­lief that the si­lence of the grave would quench forever the tran­si­ent ex­ist­ence of the hideous corpse which he had looked upon as the cradle of life.

“By de­grees I made a dis­cov­ery of still greater mo­ment. I found that these people pos­sessed a method of com­mu­nic­at­ing their ex­per­i­ence and feel­ings to one an­other by ar­tic­u­late sounds. I per­ceived that the words they spoke some­times, pro­duced pleas­ure or pain, smiles or sad­ness, in the minds and coun­ten­ances of the hear­ers. This was in­deed a god­like sci­ence, and I ar­dently de­sired to be­come ac­quain­ted with it

I feel as if I were walk­ing on the edge of a pre­cip­ice, to­wards which thou­sands are crowding, and en­deav­our­ing to plunge me into the abyss.

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.

How slowly the time passes here, encompassed as I am by frost and snow!