Frankenstein

I always find it amazing how texts from hundreds and thousands of years ago still manage to capture the essence of human life apparent today. It's amazing how even in a Gothic text published in 1831, Mary Shelley pinpointed the underlying desire of all people...

But I have one want which I have never yet been able to satisfy; and the absence of the object of which I now feel as a most severe evil. I have no friend, Margaret: when I am glowing with the enthusiasm of success, there will be none to participate in 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 would reply to mine. You may deem me romantic, my dear sister, but I bitterly feel the want of a friend. I have no one near me, gentle yet courageous, possessed of a cultivated as well as of a capacious mind, whose tastes are like my own, to approve or amend my plans. How would such a friend repair the faults of your poor brother!
- Letter from Robert Walton
Frankenstein

Okay, so slightly more morbid than you'd think, but it is a Gothic novel. Anyway, I reckon it's amazing that she could have detailed the feelings all humans have at some stage - the desire for companionship from those like themselves, to better oneself and to better the other, growing together and helping each other. Pretty awesome stuff.