Abraham Stoker (8 November 1847 - 20 April 1912) was an Irish author who is celebrated for his 1897 Gothic horror novel Dracula. During his lifetime, he was better known as the personal assistant of actor Sir Henry Irving and business manager of the Lyceum Theatre, which Irving owned. In his early years, Stoker worked as a theatre critic for an Irish newspaper, and wrote stories as well as commentaries. He also enjoyed traveling, particularly to Cruden Bay where he set two of his novels. During another visit to the English coastal town of Whitby, Stoker drew inspiration for writing Dracula. He died on 20 April 1912 due to locomotor ataxia and was cremated in north London. Since his death, his magnum opus Dracula has become one of the most well-known works in English literature, and the novel has been adapted for numerous films, short stories, and plays.
Below, find the best quotes from Dracula and corresponding page numbers! I utilize my own editions (which match the cover images used below), but regardless, the quotes will appear in order of whichever text you use.
Dracula (1897)
- "Denn die Todten reiten schnell"—("For the dead travel fast.")
- Chapter I
- Welcome to my house! Come freely. Go safely; and leave some thing of the happiness you bring!
- Chapter II
- 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.
- Chapter II
- There is reason that all things are as they are, and did you see with my eyes and know with my knowledge, you would perhaps better understand.
- Chapter II
- Despair has its own calms.
- Chapter IV
- I am longing to be with you, and by the sea, where we can talk together freely and build our castles in the air.
- Chapter V
- Thought sympathy alone can't alter facts, it can help to make them more bearable.
- Chapter VIII
- Remember, my friend, that knowledge is stronger than memory, and we should not trust the weaker.
- Chapter X
- We learn from failure, not from success!
- Chapter X
- Oh, the terrible struggled that I have had against sleep so often of late; the pain of the sleeplessness, or the pain of the fear of sleep, and 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.
- Chapter XI
- Oh, 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 makes 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.
- Chapter XIII
- Doctor, you don't know what it is to doubt everything, even yourself. No, you don't; you couldn't with eyebrows like yours.
- Chapter XIV
- 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 contemplate by men's eyes, because they know—or they 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.
- Chapter XIV
- I want you to believe . . . to believe in things that you cannot.
- Chapter XIV
- The world seems full of good men—even if there are monsters in it.
- Chapter XVII
- No one but a woman can help a man when he is in trouble of the heart.
- Chapter XVII
- I sometimes think we must be all mad and that we shall wake to sanity in strait-waistcoats.
- Chapter XX
- I have thought and thought, and it seems to me that the simplest way is the best of all.
- Chapter XXII
- It is really wonderful how much resilience there is in human nature. Let any obstructing cause, no matter what, be removed in any way—even by death—and we fly back to first principles of hope and enjoyment.
- Chapter XXIV
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