“When I, Victor Frankenstein, returned home my first care was to procure the whole works of this author [Cornelius Agrippa], and afterwards of Paracelsus and Albertus Magnus. I read and studied the wild fancies of these writers with delight; they appeared to me treasures known to few besides myself. I have described myself as always having been imbued with a fervent longing to penetrate the secrets of nature. In spite of the intense labor and wonderful discoveries of modern philosophers, I always came from my studies discontented and unsatisfied. Sir Isaac Newton is said to have avowed that he felt like a child picking up shells beside the great and unexplored ocean of truth. Those of his successors in each branch of natural philosophy with whom I was acquainted appeared even to my boy's apprehensions as tyros engaged in the same pursuit.”

— Mary Shelley (1818), Frankenstein: the Modern Prometheus (§2)

“Next in respect of time to Cornelius Agrippa comes the celebrated Dr. Faustus. Little in point of fact is known respecting this eminent personage in the annals of necromancy. His pretended history does not seem to have been written till about the year 1587, perhaps half a century after his death. This work is apparently in its principal features altogether fictitious. We have no reason however to deny the early statements as to his life. He is asserted by Camerarius and Wierus to have been born at Cundling, near Cracow, in the kingdom of Poland, and is understood to have passed the principal part of his life at the university of Wittenberg. He was probably well known to Cornelius Agrippa and Paracelsus. Melanchthon mentions him in his letters; and Conrad Gessner refers to him as a contemporary. The author of his life cites the opinions entertained respecting him by Luther. Philip Camerarius speaks of him in his ‘Horas Subsecivae’ as a celebrated name among magicians, apparently without reference to the life that has come down to us; and Wierus does the same thing. He was probably nothing more than an accomplished juggler, who appears to have practiced his art with great success in several towns of Germany. He was also no doubt a pretender to necromancy.”

— William Godwin (1834), Lives of Necromancers [1]

“The knowledge of all sciences is so difficult, if I may not say impossible, that the age of man will not suffice to learn the perfection of one art as it ought to be: which Ecclesiastes seems to intimate, where he saith, ‘I beheld the whole work of god, that man cannot find out the work that is wrought under the sun; for the which man laboureth to seek it, and cannot find it: yea, and though the wise man think to know it, he cannot find it’.”

— Cornelius Agrippa (1526), On the Vanity of the Sciences (pg. 6)