What quotes show Victor's recklessness in creating the creature, his neglect, and his silence in Frankenstein?

In volume 1, chapter 4, Victor explains to Robert Walton his reasoning for playing God (which never works well for any human). Victor admits his pursuit's reckless nature:

One of the phenomena which had peculiarly attracted my attention was the structure of the human frame, and indeed, any animal eluded with life. Whence, I often asked myself, did the principle of life proceed? It was a bold question, and one which has ever been considered a mystery; yet with how many things are we upon the brink of becoming acquainted, if cowardice or carelessness did not restrain our inquiries. ... Unless I had been animated by an almost supernatural enthusiasm, my application to this study would have been irksome, and almost intolerable.

Victor reveals his reckless reasoning; as a "modern Prometheus" (as the novel's subtitle terms him), he boldly desires to steal fire from the gods by creating life. He states that cowardice and carelessness prevent others from pursuing many of the mysteries of science, but Victor is animated (much like he animates his creature) by an almost supernatural enthusiasm, which permits him to tolerate such an unnatural pursuit. While others may perceive his actions as reckless, Victor perceives himself as bold and imbued with supernatural enthusiasm.

Victor neglects to consider his creature's free will and a parent's unconditional love. In the book of Genesis, after Adam and Eve eat the forbidden fruit from the tree of knowledge, God casts them into darkness and forbids them from ever returning to Eden; in an act of free will, they stole knowledge of man's true nature, thereby enacting man's original sin. Satan had convinced Adam and Eve to eat from the tree of knowledge; he questioned God's intention in creating them if God did not trust their ability to know what he forbade. Victor wants his creature to love him (worship him) as Adam and Eve once loved God:

A new species would bless me as its creator and source; many happy and excellent natures would owe their being to me. No father could claim the gratitude of his child so completely as I should deserve theirs.

Victor's act of free will is to attempt to create a new species imbued with happy and excellent natures who would be eternally grateful for his work. If Victor considered Adam and Eve's free will, as well as his own, he might have seen the error in his logic: once born, man's free will is his own, not his creator's. Victor neglects to be a father to an imperfect creature, whereas God continues to be a father, one who recognizes and embraces his creation's flaws—flaws he bestowed in their creation.

The creature pleads with Victor to be the God/father/creator the creature needs, but Victor rejects him.

"Oh, Frankenstein, be not equitable to every other and trample upon me alone, to whom thy justice, and even thy clemency and affection is most due. Remember, that I am thy creature; I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel, whom thou drivest from joy for no misdeed. Everywhere I see bliss, from which I alone am irrevocably excluded. I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend. Make me happy, and I shall again be virtuous."

"Begone! I will not hear you. There can be no community between you and me; we are enemies. Begone, or let us us try our strength in a fight, in which one must fall."

The creature appeals to Victor's desire for knowledge, eventually winning the creature an audience with Victor.

After hearing the creature's tale of misery, Victor agrees to create a mate for him. But when Victor ultimately destroys the unfinished female creature, it is the final rejection the creature can endure; his rage begins with Victor's rejection of him, but the destruction of his mate leaves the creature without any chance for love, happiness, or acceptance.

Victor's decision not to tell anyone about his work is a matter of personal responsibility and leads to a great deal of suffering. He knew his work was a reckless and forbidden pursuit and that his creation of the creature was unnatural, a sense that returns to him as he labors to construct the female creature:

It was, indeed, a filthy process in which I was engaged. During my first experiment, a kind of enthusiastic frenzy had blinded me to the horror of my employment; my mind was intensely fixed on the consummation of my labor, and my eyes shut to the horror of my proceedings. But now I went to it in cold blood, and my heart often sickened at the work of my hands.

Victor fails to tell anyone about his experiment and the night he first rejected his creature because he fears the consequences of his damaged reputation more than he fears for the fates of his friends and family (William, Justine, Clerval, Elizabeth, and others). As a scientist, Victor embodies the dark side of the Romantic ideal: radical individualism that privileges the artist's (or, in this case, the scientist's) pursuit of knowledge and experience.

When building the creature, Victor's selfish enthusiasm for the glory of equaling God motivated him to continue in spite of the horror of his proceedings, and in keeping his work and the creature a secret, he endangered his loved ones. He is a false God to his creature and to those who love him. As he assembles the female creature, he realizes the consequences of his self-involvement and his silence: the work of his hands sickens his heart and must be destroyed.

What quotes show Victor's recklessness in creating the creature, his neglect, and his silence in Frankenstein?

Victor Frankenstein candidly admits that his behavior was reckless, and that he was motivated more by egotism than a love for science. He states that he had been captivated by the pre-scientific ideas of alchemy, and was attracted to the idea that he might compete with God in giving life to a creature. Part of his fatal flaw was that he failed to anticipate what such a hybrid, patchwork creature would actually look like, and—even more importantly—he discounted the idea that it would have a soul and free will as much as a naturally born human.

When he began his scientific studies, he was not yet prepared to abandon alchemy, and the quest for “immortality and power” stayed with him (chapter III): "I had retrod the steps of knowledge along the paths of time, and exchanged the discoveries of recent inquirers for the dreams of forgotten alchymists. Besides, I had a contempt for the uses of modern natural philosophy."

These ideas, along with the teachings of M. Waldman, motivated Victor like nothing before.

[T]reading in the steps already marked, I will pioneer a new way, explore unknown powers, and unfold to the world the deepest mysteries of creation.

Once he succeeds in assembling the creature and bringing him to life, he is distraught that the beauty he anticipated has not materialized; instead, he abandons his creation because he sees him as hideous (chapter V). While acknowledging his proportions and features as beautiful, that only worsens the “horrid contrast” to the many flaws, such as skin that barely covers the muscles. Revolted, Victor admits defeat:

[N]ow that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart.

After time passes, and the creature wends his way through the countryside, he becomes curious about the humans he observes. However, every aspect of their comfort causes him further into despair as he understands that he can never possess even the simple pleasures they enjoy. When he sees his own reflection, his despondency is complete (chapter XII):

I became fully convinced that I was in reality the monster that I am, I was filled with the bitterest sensations of despondence and mortification.

As he stays around and learns to read as well, his education about society makes the situation even worse (chapter XIII). He understands that alienation from his creator is an essential, irremediable part of the problem:

And what was I? Of my creation and creator I was absolutely ignorant; but I knew that I possessed no money, no friends, no kind of property. I was, besides, endued with a figure hideously deformed and loathsome; I was not even of the same nature as man…. Was I then a monster, a blot upon the earth, from which all men fled, and whom all men disowned?

What quotes show Victor's recklessness in creating the creature, his neglect, and his silence in Frankenstein?

In the book, Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley, some iconic moments occur, such as Victor's creation of the creature, his neglect of the creature, and Victor’s refusal to accept responsibility for his actions.

Foremost, Victor reveals his arguably obsessive need to make the creature. In chapter four, on page 50, Victor illustrates this by stating:

“The astonishment which I had first experienced on this discovery [about the creation] soon gave place to delight and rapture. After so much time spent in painful labour, to arrive at once at the summit of my desires was the most gratifying consummation of my toils.”

Subsequently, his feelings of elation and joy are quickly eradicated and he feels the need to flee and ignore the creature. In chapter five, page 55, he shows that he now feels that he must ignore the creature’s existence.

“Unable to endure the aspect of the being I had created, I rushed out of the room”

Finally, Victor seems to refuse to accept responsibility for his creation of the creature. Although he recognizes that he made the creature, he left the creature alone without food or care to experience personal joys in his own life. In chapter six, page 69, Victor shows:

"We returned to our college on a Sunday afternoon: the peasants were dancing, and every one we met appeared gay and happy. My own spirits were high, and I bounded along with feelings of unbridled joy and hilarity."

Consequently, Victor quickly advances through his stages of making the creature, neglecting the creature, and refusing to take responsibility for his actions. This misconduct is only furthered after the creature begins to act unlawfully and his creator continues to fail at handling the situation.

Source

Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft. Frankenstein. Ed. Karen Karbiener. New York: Barnes & Noble Classics, 2003. Print.

What quotes show Victor's mental instability while creating his creature in Frankenstein?

Chapters IV and V of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, focus on Victor's creation of the monster, as well as on Victor's overall state of mind as a result of his obsession with infusing this body that he has created out of dead body parts, with life. The reader can witness, from Victor's own words, that he was indeed what he calls "a different man" during this avid time where his ambition and obsession seem to have taken the best of him.

First, in chapter IV, Victor explains how his obsession begins by saying that, at first, he absorbed the teachings with the same interest as any other student. However, he also says that slowly his ambition

gained strength as I proceeded, and soon became so ardent and eager that the stars often disappeared in the light of morning whilst I was yet engaged in my laboratory.

This is the first instance of Victor's slowly-growing mental instability. He continues further one stating the fervor that was born out of this desire to give life. Even Victor, who is speaking in past tense in remembrance of this unhappy time, admits that something was indeed very wrong when his hunger for creating life became bigger and more possessive of him.

No one can conceive the variety of feelings which bore me onwards, like a hurricane, in the first enthusiasm of success.[] ... A new species would bless me as its creator and source; many happy and excellent natures would owe their being to me.

Also in chapter IV we find how Victor describes the self-made laboratory where he was working day and night until bringing himself to illness; he talks of body parts laying around, of the massive creature laying in the middle, of objects of labor, blood, and unimaginably gruesome views that even make Victor shriek when looking back. The one thing that is consistent is that Victor is clear in how his mind and body were completely taken over by the task. 

My limbs now tremble and my eyes swim with the remembrance; but then a resistless, and almost frantic, impulse urged me forward; I seemed to have lost all soul or sensation but for this one pursuit.

It is in chapter V, however that Victor, after having isolated himself from friends and family alike, finally gets his wish granted. It is also the moment when Victor realizes exactly the extent of his experiment; it is the wake up call that Victor needed to finally come to realize exactly how gruesome, unethical, and abnormal his actions were.

How can I describe my emotions at this catastrophe, or how delineate the wretch whom with such infinite pains and care I had endeavoured to form?

Victor laments the creation of the monster, realizes the insane strength that moved his actions, and he explains conclusively that he basically wasted his time and health in the endeavour of creating life. This is because, as he sees the horrid looks of the creature, he also realizes that he, and only he, is responsible for it.

For this I had deprived myself of rest and health. I had desired it with an ardour that far exceeded moderation; but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart.

From that moment on, Victor's life becomes nothing but a never-ending race to escape his own creation.