Bram Stoker Quotations

There are such beings as vampires, some of us have evidence that they exist. Even had we not the proof of our own unhappy experience, the teachings and the records of the past give proof enough for sane peoples.

There are mysteries which men can only guess at, which age by age they may solve only in part.

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.

And so we remained till the red of the dawn began to fall through the snow gloom. I was desolate and afraid, and full of woe and terror. But when that beautiful sun began to climb the horizon life was to me again.

Suddenly, I became conscious of the fact that the driver was in the act of pulling up the horses in the courtyard of a vast ruined castle, from whose tall black windows came no ray of light, and whose broken battlements showed a jagged line against the sky.

No man knows till he has suffered from the night how sweet and dear to his heart and eye the morning can be.

A house cannot be made habitable in a day; and, after all, how few days go to make up a century.

Whether it is the old lady's fear, or the many ghostly traditions of this place, or the crucifix itself, I do not know, but I am not feeling nearly as easy in my mind as usual.

Before I left the castle I so fixed its entrances that never more can the Count enter there Undead.

Let me be accurate in everything, for though you and I have seen some strange things together, you may at the first think that I, Van Helsing, am mad. That the many horrors and the so long strain on nerves has at the last turn my brain.

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.

He may not enter anywhere at the first, unless there be some one of the household who bid him to come, though afterwards he can come as he please.

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.

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.

It is the eve of St. George's Day. Do you not know that tonight, when the clock strikes midnight, all the evil things in the world will have full sway?

Sleep has no place it can call its own.

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.

Love is, after all, a selfish thing; and it throws a black shadow on anything between which and the light it stands.

Yes, there is some one I love, though he has not told me yet that he even loves me.

We are in Transylvania, and Transylvania is not England. Our ways are not your ways, and there shall be to you many strange things. Nay, from what you have told me of your experiences already, you know something of what strange things there may be.

I stood beside Van Helsing, and said;- "Ah, well, poor girl, there is peace for her at last. It is the end!" He turned to me, and said with grave solemnity:- "Not so; alas! not so. It is only the beginning!

Even if she be not harmed, her heart may fail her in so much and so many horrors; and hereafter she may suffer--both in waking, from her nerves, and in sleep, from her dreams.

She is one of God's women fashioned by His own hand to show us men and other women that there is a heaven where we can enter, and that its light can be here on earth.

Oh, why must a man like that be made unhappy when there are lots of girls about who would worship the very ground he trod on?

Enter freely and of your own free will!

Loneliness will sit over our roofs with brooding wings.

We are all drifting reefwards now, and faith is our only anchor.

These infinitesimal distinctions between man and man are too paltry for an Omnipotent Being. How these madmen give themselves away! The real God taketh heed lest a sparrow fall. But the God created from human vanity sees no difference between an eagle and a sparrow.

The blood is life... and it shall be mine!

I have a sort of empty feeling; nothing in the world seems of sufficient importance to be worth the doing.

There are bad dreams for those who sleep unwisely.

I suppose a cry does us all good at times-clears the air as other rain does.

Because if a woman's heart was free a man might have hope.

She was young and very beautiful, but pale, like the grey pallor of death.

I could not resist the temptation of mystifying him a bit, I suppose it is some taste of the original apple that remains still in our mouths.

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 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.

Being proposed to all is very nice and all that sort of thing, but it isn’t at all a happy thing when you have to see a poor fellow, whom you know loves you honestly, going away and looking all broken-hearted, and to know that, no matter what he may say at the moment, you are passing quite out if his life

I do not, as you know, take sufficient interest in dress to be able to describe the new fashions. Dress is a bore.

There was one great tomb more lordly than all the rest; huge it was, and nobly proportioned. On it was but one word, DRACULA.

No one but a woman can help a man when he is in trouble of the heart.

Doctor, you don't know what it is to doubt everything, even yourself. No, you don't; you couldn't with eyebrows like yours.

And yet, unless my senses deceive me, the old centuries had, and have, powers of their own which mere 'modernity' cannot kill.

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.

Good women tell all their lives, and by day and by hour and by minute, such things that angels can read.

This man belongs to me, I want him!

We learn of great things by little experiences.

Chasing an errant swarm of bees is nothing to following a naked lunatic when the fit of escaping is upon him!

But a stranger in a strange land, he is no one. Men know him not, and to know not is to care not for.

No man knows till he experiences it, what it is like to feel his own life-blood drawn away into the woman he loves.

The blood is the life!

I suppose that we women are such cowards that we think a man will save us from fears, and we marry him.

You yourself never loved; you never love! Yes, I too can love; you yourselves can tell it from the past. Is it not so?

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.

I have been so long master that I would be master still, or at least that none other should be master of me.

Ah, we men and women are like ropes drawn tight with strain that pull us in different directions.

The inscrutable laws of sex have so arranged that even a timid woman is not afraid of a fierce and haughty man.

Paris is a city of centralisation--and centralisation and classification are closely allied. In the early times, when centralisation is becoming a fact, its forerunner is classification. All things which are similar or analogous become grouped together, and from the grouping of groups rises one whole or central point. We see radiating many long arms with innumerable tentaculae, and in the centre rises a gigantic head with a comprehensive brain and keen eyes to look on every side and ears sensitive to hear--and a voracious mouth to swallow.

It is ever thus that the things which we do wrong - although they may seem little at the time, and though from the hardness of our hearts we pass them lightly by - come back to us with bitterness.

Above the care of Nature and of State, Suspended in the noon of Night we wait, All slumber nursing, to make sweet and pure, While secret Nature, weaving works the cure. We are the handmaids of the hollow night, The angels of the dark, restoring sight; We go -- the pains of Day to soothe, console -- Awake, arise! Behold thou art made whole.

As yet we know nothing of what goes to create or evoke the active spark of life.

Ordinary men, to whom all things are possible, don't often, if ever, think of Heaven. It is a name, and nothing more, and they are content to wait and let things be, but to those who are doomed to be shut out for ever you cannot think what it means, you cannot guess or measure the terrible endless longing to see the gates opened, and to be able to join the white figures within.

Faith ... that faculty which enables us to believe things which we know to be untrue.

Far, far away, there is a beautiful Country which no human eye has ever seen in waking hours. Under the Sunset it lies, where the distant horizon bounds the day, and where the clouds, splendid with light and colour, give a promise of the glory and beauty which encompass it. Sometimes it is given to us to see it in dreams.

The Stars are a long way off, and their words get somewhat dulled in the message.

The fame of an actor is won in minutes and seconds, not in years.

Children who wish to become good and great men or good and noble women, should try to know well all the people whom they meet. Thus they will find that there is no one who has not much of good; and when they see some great folly, or some meanness, or some cowardice, or some fault or weakness in another person, they should examine themselves carefully. Then they will see that, perhaps, they too have some of the same fault in themselves - although perhaps it does not come out in the same way - and then they must try to conquer that fault.

The Dead travel fast.

Safety and the assurance of safety are things of the past.

We are able to learn from a failure, but perhaps not much from a success!

I am Dracula, and I bid you welcome . . .

But hush! No telling to others that make so inquisitive questions. We must obey, and silence is a part of obedience, and obedience is to bring you strong and well into loving arms that wait for you.

Nature in one of her beneficent moods has ordained that even death has some antidote to its own terrors.

It is wonderful what tricks our dreams play us, and how conveniently we can imagine.

And then away for home! Away to the quickest and nearest train! Away from this cursed land, where the devil and his children stil walk with earthly feet!

A brave man's hand can speak for itself, it does not even need a woman's love to hear its music.

I'm a hard nut to crack, and I take it standing up.

If a man's esteem and gratitude are ever worth the winning, you have won mine today. If ever the future should bring to you a time when you need a man's help, believe me, you will not call in vain. God grant that no such time may ever come to you to break the sunshine of your life; but if it should ever come, promise me that you will let me know.

But we are pledged to set the world free. Our toil must be in silence, and our efforts all in secret. For in this enlightened age, when men believe not even what they see, the doubting of wise men would be his greatest strength. It would be at once his sheath and his armor, and his weapons to destroy us, his enemies, who are willing to peril even our own souls for the safety of one we love. For the good of mankind, and for the honor and glory of God.

It is something like the way dame Nature gathers round a foreign body an envelope of some insensitive tissue which can protect from evil that which it would otherwise harm by contact. If this be an ordered selfishness, then we should pause before we condemn any one for the vice of egoism, for there may be deeper root for its causes than we have knowledge of.

Then a dog began to howl somewhere in a farmhouse far down the road, a long, agonized wailing, as if from fear. The sound was taken up by another dog, and then another and another, till, borne on the wind which now sighed softly through the Pass, a wild howling began, which seemed to come from all over the country, as far as the imagination could grasp it through the gloom of the night.

He means to succeed, and a man who has centuries before him can afford to wait and to go slow.

But we are strong, each in our purpose, and we are all more strong together.

Souls and memories can do strange things during trance.

Let me tell you, my friend, that there are things done today in electrical science which would have been deemed unholy by the very man who discovered electricity, who would themselves not so long before been burned as wizards

All men are mad in some way or the other, and inasmuch as you deal discreetly with your madmen, so deal with God's madmen too, the rest of the world.

For me, I say no, but then I am old, and life, with his sunshine, his fair places, his song of birds, his music and his love, lie far behind. You others are young. Some have seen sorrow, but there are fair days yet in store. What say you?

I want to cut off her head and take out her heart.

Truly there is no such thing as finality.

Never did tombs look so ghastly white. Never did cypress, or yew, or juniper so seem the embodiment of funeral gloom. Never did tree or grass wave or rustle so ominously. Never did bough creak so mysteriously, and never did the far-away howling of dogs send such a woeful presage through the night.

But this night our feet must tread in thorny paths, or later, and for ever, the feet you love must walk in paths of flame!

No man knows where the Castle of King Death is. All men and women, boys and girls, and even little wee children should so live that when they have to enter the Castle and see the grim King, they may not fear to behold his face.

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!

Denn die Todten reiten Schnell. (For the dead travel fast.)

I am longing to be with you, and by the sea, where we can talk together freely and build our castles in the air.

Take me away from all this Death.

I will not let you go into the unknown alone.

There is a method in his madness, and the rudimentary idea in my mind is growing. It will be a whole idea soon, and then, oh, unconscious cerebration.

Once again...welcome to my house. Come freely. Go safely; and leave something of the happiness you bring.

Do you believe in destiny? That even the powers of time can be altered for a single purpose? That the luckiest man who walks on this earth is the one who finds… true love?

Our toil must be in silence, and our efforts all in secret; for this enlightened age, when men believe not even what they see, the doubting of wise men would be his greatest strength.