It is true, we shall be monsters, cut off from all the world; but on that account we shall be more attached to one another.
Interpretation
Isolation can strengthen bonds between people who remain together.
In this quote, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley acknowledges that when individuals are cut off from the outside world, they may appear monstrous or deviant. However, she suggests that this separation can also deepen their connections with one another, as they rely on each other for companionship and understanding in isolation.
In practice
This quote can be used to highlight the importance of solidarity in times of crisis during a motivational speech.
Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of a void, but out of chaos; the materials must in the first place be afforded; it can give form to dark, shapeless substances, but cannot bring into being the substance itself.
The instructor can scarcely give sensibility where it is essentially wanting, nor talent to the unpercipient block. But he can cultivate and direct the affections of the pupil, who puts forth, as a parasite, tendrils by which to cling, not knowing to what - to a supporter or a destroyer.
What terrified me will terrify others; and I need only describe the spectre which had haunted my midnight pillow.
I shall commit my thoughts to paper, it is true; but that is a poor medium for the communication of feeling. I desire the company of a man who could sympathize with me, whose eyes would reply to mine.
Heavy misfortunes have befallen us, but let us only cling closer to what remains, and transfer our love for those whom we have lost to those who yet live. Our circle will be small, but bound close by the ties of affection and mutual misfortune. And when time shall have softened your despair, new and dear objects of care will be born to replace those of whom we have been so cruelly deprived.
Hateful day when I received life!' I exclaimed in agony. 'Accursed creator! Why did you form a monster so hideous that even you turned from me in disgust? God, in pity, made man beautiful and alluring, after his own image; but my form is a filthy type of yours, more horrid even from the very resemlance. Satan had his companions, fellow-devils, to admire and encourage him; but I am solitary and abhorred.' - Frankenstein
Anyone can sympathize with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature to sympathize with a friend's success.
Friendships are the family we make - not the one we inherit. I've always been someone to whom friendship, elective affinities, is as important as family.
Friends: not one. Just a few acquaintances who imagine they feel something for me and who might be sorry if a train ran over me and the funeral was on a rainy day.
Daughter of Eve from the far land of Spare Oom where eternal summer reigns around the bright city of War Drobe, how would it be if you came and had tea with me?
That's what I meant,' said Pippin. 'We hobbits ought to stick together, and we will. I shall go, unless they chain me up. There must be someone with intelligence in the party.
A melancholy lesson of advancing years is the realisation that you can't make old friends.
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