“I desired love and fellowship, and I was still spurned. Was there no injustice in this? Am I to be thought the only criminal, when all humankind sinned against me?”

—  Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley , Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus

The monster to Robert Walton
Frankenstein (1818)
Context: You, who call Frankenstein your friend, seem to have a knowledge of my crimes and his misfortunes. But in the detail which he gave you of them he could not sum up the hours and months of misery which I endured wasting in impotent passions. For while I destroyed his hopes, I did not satisfy my own desires. They were forever ardent and craving; still I desired love and fellowship, and I was still spurned. Was there no injustice in this? Am I to be thought the only criminal, when all humankind sinned against me?

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update April 19, 2024. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "I desired love and fellowship, and I was still spurned. Was there no injustice in this? Am I to be thought the only cri…" by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley?
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley photo
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley 94
English novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, … 1797–1851

Related quotes

Frances Ridley Havergal photo

“It is not that I feel less weak, but Thou
Wilt be my strength. It is not that I see
Less sin, but more of pardoning love in Thee,
And all-sufficient grace. Enough! And now
All fluttering thought is stilled; I only rest,
And feel that Thou art near, and know that I am blest.”

Frances Ridley Havergal (1836–1879) British poet and hymn-writer

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 447.

Fiona Apple photo

“What I need is a good defense
'Cause I'm feeling like a criminal
And I need to be redeemed
To the one I've sinned against
Because he's all I ever knew of love.”

Fiona Apple (1977) singer-songwriter, musician

Criminal
Song lyrics, Tidal (1996)

Dietrich Bonhoeffer photo

“If my sinfulness appears to me in any way smaller or less detestable in comparison with the sins of others, I am still not recognizing my sinfulness at all.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) German Lutheran pastor, theologian, dissident anti-Nazi

Source: Life Together: The Classic Exploration of Christian Community

Aurelius Augustinus photo

“For it still seemed to me “that it is not we who sin, but some other nature sinned in us.” And it gratified my pride to be beyond blame, and when I did anything wrong not to have to confess that I had done wrong. … I loved to excuse my soul and to accuse something else inside me (I knew not what) but which was not I. But, assuredly, it was I, and it was my impiety that had divided me against myself. That sin then was all the more incurable because I did not deem myself a sinner.”

Aurelius Augustinus book Confessions

A. Outler, trans. (Dover: 2002), Book 5, Chapter 10, p. 77
Confessions (c. 397)

Ernst Kaltenbrunner photo

“I am thought of as another Himmler. I'm not. The papers make me out as a criminal. I never killed anyone.”

Ernst Kaltenbrunner (1903–1946) Austrian-born senior official of Nazi Germany executed for war crimes

To Leon Goldensohn, 4/8/46, from "The Nuremberg Interviews" by Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately - History - 2004

Bernhard Schlink photo

“So I was still guilty. And if I was not guilty because one cannot be guilty of betraying a criminal, then I was guilty of having loved a criminal.”

Bernhard Schlink book The Reader

Source: The Reader

Elizabeth Barrett Browning photo

“I love you not only for what you are, but for what I am when I am with you. I love you not only for what you have made of yourself, but for what you are making of me. I love you for the part of me that you bring out.”

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861) English poet, author
F. Scott Fitzgerald photo

“… and for a moment I thought I loved her. But I am slow-thinking and full of interior rules that act as brakes on my desires”

F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby

Source: The Great Gatsby

Anne Sexton photo

“And we are magic talking to itself,
noisy and alone. I am queen of all my sins
forgotten. Am I still lost?
Once I was beautiful. Now I am myself”

Anne Sexton (1928–1974) poet from the United States

Source: To Bedlam and Part Way Back

“Love me or Hate me, I am still gonna shine.”

Nikita Gokhale (1990) Indian Actress, Indian Model

"‘6 bold statements of Nikita Gokhale’" http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/entertainment/marathi/movies/6-bold-statements-of-Nikita-Gokhale/6-bold-statements-of-Nikita-Gokhale/photostory/45617534.cms.TimesOfIndia.com. December 23, 2014.

Related topics