Robert - But I have one want which I have never yet been able to satisfy; and the absence of the abject of which I now feel as the most severe evil. I have no friend, Margaret: when I am glowing with the enthusiasm of success, there will be none to participate my joy; if I am assailed by disappointment, no one will endeavour to sustain me in dejection. 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 sympathise with me, whose eyes could reply to mine. You may deem me romantics, my dear sister, but I bitterly feel the want of a friend. I have no one near me, gentle yet courageous, possess of a cultivated as well as of a capacious mind, whose tastes are like my own, to approve or amend my plans
Frankenstein ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
The power of friendship is often unrecognised. We know it's good, a nice thing to have, but it's far more than that. I think we often fail to see how much good it does. It's not just a luxury that enhances life and makes it a little better. I think it's fundamental to having a good life. Life without friendship may be bearable, but it's severely lacking.
It's one thing to enjoy peaceful solitude; it's another to be utterly alone. We may choose a period of solitude to recover ourselves; we don't choose to be alone. Solitude is restorative; loneliness is depleting.
The problem is that we don't recognise how powerful friendship is because it's good, and we tend to take good things for granted. We don't tend to notice the presence of good, but we definitely feel the absence of it.
The absence of friendship produces bad outcomes, and those we quickly detect. The absence of friendship is isolation, and we know that isolation can ruin a person's psyche. Isolation corresponds with loneliness, and the effects of loneliness can be quite devastating. Lonely people become depressed, possibly even desperate, and desperate people can be dangerous.
Monster – Once I falsely hoped to meet with beings who, pardoning my outward form, would love me for the excellent qualities which I was capable of unfolding. I was nourished with high thoughts of honour and devotion. But now crime has degraded me beneath the meanest animal. No guilt, no mischief, no malignity, no misery, can be found comparable to mine. When I run over the frightful catalogue of my sins, I cannot believe that I am the same creature whose thoughts were once filled with sublime and transcendent visions of the beauty and the majesty of goodness. But it is even so; the fallen angel becomes a malignant devil. Yet even that enemy of God and man had friends and associates in his desolation; I am alone
Oftentimes, the worst criminals are lonely, isolated people no one noticed. Perhaps if people had noticed them, things might have been altogether different. Perhaps they would have preserved their humanity instead of succumbing to inner monsters. Perhaps they wouldn't have been so desperate to be seen, to be noticed.
Sometimes negative is worse than nothing. Negative is still something. Infamy is still fame. And misery loves company. Loneliness is when you have nothing left to lose.
Monster - Shall each man find a wife for his bosom, and each beast have his mate, and I be lone? I had feelings of affection, and they were required by detestation and scorn. [...] Beware, for I am fearless, and therefore powerful
The power of friendship often seems to pale in comparison to the power of loneliness because the effects of the latter are far more pronounced than the effects of the former. That's because friendship is humble. It's safe. It doesn't need to prove itself or call attention to itself. Friendship provides the secure foundation that allows you to shift the focus outside of yourself