Dracula (novel)

Dracula is a gothic horror novel by Bram Stoker, published on 26 May 1897. An epistolary novel, the narrative is related through letters, diary entries, and newspaper articles. It has no single protagonist and opens with solicitor Jonathan Harker taking a business trip to stay at the castle of a Transylvanian nobleman, Count Dracula. Harker escapes the castle after discovering that Dracula is a vampire, and the Count moves to England and plagues the seaside town of Whitby. A small group, led by Abraham Van Helsing, investigate.

Quotes

Chapter I

Denn die Todten reiten schnell—("For the dead travel fast")
- Jonathan Harker's Journal, 4 May. From Bürger's "Lenore"

Chapter II

I heard a heavy step approaching behind the great door, and saw through the chinks the gleam of a coming light. Then there was the sound of rattling chains and the clanking of massive bolts drawn back. A key was turned with the loud grating noise of long disuse, and the great door swung back.
Within, stood a tall old man, clean shaven save for a long white moustache, and clad in black from head to foot, without a single speck of colour about him anywhere. He held in his hand an antique silver lamp, in which the flame burned without a chimney or globe of any kind, throwing long quivering shadows as it flickered in the draught of the open door. The old man motioned me in with his right hand with a courtly gesture, saying in excellent English, but with a strange intonation.
"Welcome to my house! Enter freely and of your own free will!"
- Jonathan Harker’s Journal

I am Dracula; and I bid you welcome, Mr. Harker, to my house. Come in, the night air is chill, and you must need to eat and rest.
- Count Dracula to Jonathan Harker

We are in Transylvania, and Transylvania is not England. Our ways are not your ways, and there shall be to you many strange things.
- Dracula to Jonathan Harker

“Listen to them — the children of the night. What music they make.”
- Dracula describing the howling of wolves to Jonathan Harker

“Welcome to my house. Come freely. Go safely; and leave something of the happiness you bring!”
- Dracula to Jonathan Harker

I am all in a sea of wonders. I doubt; I fear; I think strange things, which I dare not confess to my own soul. God keep me, if only for the sake of those dear to me!
- Jonathan Harker's Journal

Chapter III

They whispered together, and then they all three laughed—such a silvery, musical laugh, but as hard as though the sound never could have come through the softness of human lips. It was like the intolerable, tingling sweetness of water-glasses when played on by a cunning hand.
- Jonathan Harker's Journal, 16 May

“He is young and strong; there are kisses for us all.”
- Jonathan Harker's Journal, 16 May. Spoken by one of the Brides of Dracula

Chapter IV

Despair has its own calms.
- Jonathan Harker's Journal, 28 May

No man knows till he has suffered from the night how sweet and dear to his heart and eye the morning can be.
- Jonathan Harker's Journal, 25 June, morning

The last I saw of Count Dracula was his kissing his hand to me; with a red light of triumph in his eyes, and with a smile that Judas in hell might be proud of.
- Jonathan Harker's Journal, 29 June

Chapter V

I am longing to be with you, and by the sea, where we can talk together freely and build our castles in the air.
- Letter from Miss Mina Murray to Miss Lucy Westenra, 9 May

I suppose that we women are such cowards that we think a man will save us from fears, and we marry him.
- Letter, Lucy Westenra to Mina Murray, 24 May

Chapter VI

For life be, after all, only a waitin’ for somethin’ else than what we’re doin’; and death be all that we can rightly depend on.
- Mina Murray’s Journal, 6 August

Chapter VIII

Though sympathy can’t alter facts, it can help to make them more bearable.
- Mina Murray's Journal, 12 August

Chapter IX

He is a philosopher and a metaphysician, and one of the most advanced scientists of his day; and he has, I believe, an absolutely open mind.
- Letter from Dr. Seward to Arthur Holmwood, 2 September

Chapter X

Remember, my friend, that knowledge is stronger than memory, and we should not trust the weaker.
- Professor Abraham Van Helsing to Dr. John Seward

Nothing is too small. I counsel you, put down in record even your doubts and surmises. Hereafter it may be of interest to you to see how true you guess. We learn from failure, not from success!
- Van Helsing to Dr. Seward

He seemed so confident that I, remembering my own confidence two nights before and with the baneful result, felt awe and vague terror. It must have been my weakness that made me hesitate to tell it to my friend, but I felt it all the more, like unshed tears.
- Dr. John Seward

Chapter XI

Oh, the terrible struggle that I have had against sleep so often of late; the pain of the sleeplessness, or the pain of the fear of sleep, with such unknown horrors as it has for me! How blessed are some people, whose lives have no fears, no dreads; to whom sleep is a blessing that comes nightly, and brings nothing but sweet dreams. Well, here I am to-night, hoping for sleep, and lying like Ophelia in the play, with “virgin crants and maiden strewments.” I never liked garlic before, but to-night it is delightful! There is peace in its smell; I feel sleep coming already. Good-night, everybody.
- Lucy Westenra’s Diary

I have always thought that a wild animal never looks so well as when some obstacle of pronounced durability is between us. A personal experience has intensified rather than diminished that idea.
- The Keeper in the Zoological Gardens

Chapter XIII

Do not think that I am not sad, though I laugh. See, I have cried even when the laugh did choke me. But no more think that I am all sorry when I cry, for the laugh he come just the same. Keep it always with you that laughter who knock at your door and say, ‘May I come in?’ is not the true laughter. No! he is a king, and he come when and how he like. He ask no person; he choose no time of suitability. He say, ‘I am here.’ Behold, in example I grieve my heart out for that so sweet young girl; I give my blood for her, though I am old and worn; I give my time, my skill, my sleep; I let my other sufferers want that so she may have all. And yet I can laugh at her very grave — laugh when the clay from the spade of the sexton drop upon her coffin and say ‘Thud, thud!’ to my heart, till it send back the blood from my cheek. My heart bleed for that poor boy — that dear boy, so of the age of mine own boy had I been so blessed that he live, and with his hair and eyes the same. There, you know now why I love him so. And yet when he say things that touch my husband-heart to the quick, and make my father-heart yearn to him as to no other man — not even you, friend John, for we are more level in experiences than father and son — yet even at such a moment King Laugh he come to me and shout and bellow in my ear, ‘Here I am! here I am!’ till the blood come dance back and bring some of the sunshine that he carry with him to my cheek. Oh, friend John, it is a strange world, a sad world, a world full of miseries, and woes, and troubles; and yet when King Laugh come, he make them all dance to the tune he play. Bleeding hearts, and dry bones of the churchyard, and tears that burn as they fall — all dance together to the music that he make with that smileless mouth of him. And believe me, friend John, that he is good to come, and kind. Ah, we men and women are like ropes drawn tight with strain that pull us different ways. Then tears come; and, like the rain on the ropes, they brace us up, until perhaps the strain become too great, and we break. But King Laugh he come like the sunshine, and he ease off the strain again; and we bear to go on with our labour, what it may be.”
- Dr. Seward's Diary, 22 September

“Friend John, forgive me if I pain. I showed not my feeling to others when it would wound, but only to you, my old friend, whom I can trust. If you could have looked into my very heart then when I want to laugh; if you could have done so when the laugh arrived; if you could do so now, when King Laugh have pack up his crown, and all that is to him — for he go far, far away from me, and for a long, long time — maybe you would perhaps pity me the most of all.”
I was touched by the tenderness of his tone, and asked why.
“Because I know!”
- Professor Van Helsing to Dr. John Seward, in Dr. Seward's Diary, 22 September

And now we are all scattered; and for many a long day loneliness will sit over our roofs with brooding wings. Lucy lies in the tomb of her kin, a lordly death-house in a lonely churchyard, away from teeming London; where the air is fresh, and the sun rises over Hampstead Hill, and where wild flowers grow of their own accord.
- Dr. Seward’s Diary, 22 September

Chapter XIV

“Doctor, you don’t know what it is to doubt everything, even yourself. No, you don't; you couldn't with eyebrows like yours.”
- Jonathan Harker’s Journal

You reason well, and your wit is bold, but you are too prejudiced. You do not let your eyes see nor your ears hear, and that which is outside your daily life is not of account to you. Do you not think that there are things which you cannot understand, and yet which are, that some people see things that others cannot? But there are things old and new which must not be contemplated by men's eyes, because they know, or think they know, some things which other men have told them. Ah, it is the fault of our science that it wants to explain all, and if it explain not, then it says there is nothing to explain. But yet we see around us every day the growth of new beliefs, which think themselves new, and which are yet but the old, which pretend to be young, like the fine ladies at the opera.
- Van Helsing to Dr. Seward

My thesis is this: I want you to believe.
- Van Helsing to Dr. Seward

Chapter XVI

One and all we felt that the holy calm that lay like sunshine over the wasted face and form was only an earthly token and symbol of the calm that was to reign for ever.
- Dr. Seward of Lucy Westenra

Chapter XVII

The world seems full of good men—even if there are monsters in it.
- Mina Harker’s Journal

No one but a woman can help a man when he is in trouble of the heart.
- Mr. Morris to Mina Harker

Chapter XVIII

She has man’s brain—a brain that a man should have were he much gifted—and a woman’s heart.

Chapter XX

I sometimes think we must be all mad and that we shall wake to sanity in strait-waistcoats.
- Dr. Seward’s Diary.

Chapter XXIII

You think to baffle me, you—with your pale faces all in a row, like sheep in a butcher's. You shall be sorry yet, each one of you! You think you have left me without a place to rest, but I have more. My revenge is just begun! I spread it over centuries, and time is on my side. Your girls that you all love are mine already. And through them you and others shall yet be mine, my creatures, to do my bidding and to be my jackals when I want to feed. Bah!
- Dracula, having found Jonathan Harker, Quincey Morris and Arthur Holmwood in his house

Chapter XXIV

But we are strong, each in our purpose; and we are all more strong together.
- Dr. Seward's Phonograph Diary, spoken by Van Helsing

Chapter XXVII

The sun was almost down on the mountain tops, and the shadows of the whole group fell upon the snow. I saw the Count lying within the box upon the earth, some of which the rude falling from the cart had scattered over him. He was deathly pale, just like a waxen image, and the red eyes glared with the horrible vindictive look which I knew so well. As I looked, the eyes saw the sinking sun, and the look of hate in them turned to triumph. But, on the instant, came the sweep and flash of Jonathan's great knife. I shrieked as I saw it shear through the throat. Whilst at the same moment Mr. Morris's bowie knife plunged into the heart. It was like a miracle, but before our very eyes, and almost in the drawing of a breath, the whole body crumbled into dust and passed from our sight. I shall be glad as long as I live that even in that moment of final dissolution, there was in the face a look of peace, such as I never could have imagined might have rested there.
- Mina Harker's Journal, 6 November

Note

Seven years ago we all went through the flames. And the happiness of some of us since then is, we think, well worth the pain we endured.
- Jonathan Harker

Quotes about Dracula

It is said of Mrs. Radcliffe that, when writing her now almost forgotten romances, she shut herself up in absolute seclusion, and fed upon raw beef, in order to give her work the desired atmosphere of gloom, tragedy and terror. If one had no assurance to the contrary, one might well suppose that a similar method and regimen had been adopted by Mr. Bram Stoker while writing his new novel Dracula.
- Review in The Daily Mail (1 June 1897), p. 3

A writer who attempts in the nineteenth century to rehabilitate the ancient legends of the were-wolf and the vampire has set himself a formidable task. Most of the delightful old supersitions of the past have an unhappy way of appearing limp and sickly in the glare of a later day, and in such a story as Dracula, by Bram Stoker, the reader must reluctantly acknowledge that the region for horrors has shifted its ground. Man is no longer in dread of the monstrous and the unnatural, and although Mr. Stoker has tackled his gruesome subject with enthusiasm, the effect is more often grotesque than terrible. The Transylvanian site of Castle Dracula is skilfully chosen, and the picturesque region is well described. Count Dracula himself has been in his day a medieval noble, who, by reason of his "vampire" qualities, is unable to die properly, but from century to century resuscitates his life of the "Un-Dead," as the author terms it, by nightly draughts of blood from the throats of living victims, with the appalling consequence that those once so bitten must become vampires in their turn. The plot is too complicated for reproduction, but it says no little for the author's powers that in spite of its absurdities the reader can follow the story with interest to the end. It is, however, an artistic mistake to fill a whole volume with horrors. A touch of the mysterious, the terrible, or the supernatural is infinitely more effective and credible.
- Review in The Manchester Guardian (15 June 1897) [1]

External links

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