Recently, I watched another adaptation of the novel Dracula by Bram Stoker:
Dracula (2025) ‧ Horror/Fantasy ‧ 2h 9m.
I highly recommend it, and therefore I've brought you my favorite quotes from the novel.
1. Jonathan Harker's Journal (Transylvania, early in the novel)
“These friends - and he laid his hand on some of the books - have been good friends to me, and for some years past, ever since I had the idea of going to London, have given me many, many hours of pleasure. Through them I have come to know your great England; and to know her is to love her. I long to go through the crowded streets of your mighty London, to be in the midst of the whirl and rush of humanity, to share its life, its change, its death, and all that makes it what it is.”
2. Jonathan Harker's Journal (while a prisoner in the castle)
“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?”
“No man knows till he experiences it, what it is like to feel his own life-blood drawn away into the woman he loves.”
3. Dracula to Jonathan Harker (about the Szekelys and his own history)
“And so you, like the others, would play your brains against mine. You would help these men to hunt me and frustrate me in my designs! You know now, and they know in part already, and will know in full before long, what it is to cross my path. They should have kept their energies for use closer to home. Whilst they played wits against me - against me who commanded nations, and intrigued for them, and fought for them, hundreds of years before they were born - I was countermining them. And you, their best beloved one, are now to me, flesh of my flesh; blood of my blood; kin of my kin; my bountiful wine-press for awhile; and shall later on be my companion and my helper.”
4. Jonathan Harker's Journal (reflecting on his escape attempt)
“I must take action of some sort whilst the courage of the day is upon me.”
5. Mina Murray's Journal (before Jonathan returns, at Whitby)
“I am longing to be with you, and by the sea, where we can talk together freely and build our castles in the air.”
“No one but a woman can help a man when he is in trouble of the heart.”
“Loneliness will sit over our roofs with brooding wings.”
6. Dr. Seward's Diary (while treating Renfield)
“Perhaps I may gain more knowledge out of the folly of this madman than I shall from the teaching of the most wise.”
“All men are mad in some way or another, and inasmuch as you deal discreetly with your madmen, so deal with God's madmen too, the rest of the world.”
“You must not be alone; for to be alone is to be full of fears and alarms.”
“Don't you know that I am sane and earnest now, that I am no lunatic in a mad fit, but a sane man fighting for his soul?”
7. Dr. Seward's Diary (reflecting on Lucy's illness and his own feelings)
“I have a sort of empty feeling; nothing in the world seems of sufficient importance to be worth the doing.”
“It is wonderful what tricks our dreams play us, and how conveniently we can imagine.”
8. Mina Murray's Journal (after Lucy's death, reflecting on grief)
“Though sympathy alone can't alter facts, it can help to make them more bearable.”
“We women have something of the mother in us that makes us rise above smaller matters when the mother-spirit is invoked; I felt this big, sorrowing man's head resting on me, as though it were that of the baby that some day may lie on my bosom, and I stroked his hair as though he were my own child. I never thought at the time how strange it all was.”
“I suppose a cry does us all good at times—clears the air as other rain does.”
9. Van Helsing to Dr. Seward (after Lucy's death, explaining his methods)
“Remember my friend, that knowledge is stronger than memory, and we should not trust the weaker.”
“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?”
“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.”
10. Van Helsing to the Crew of Light (when they begin the hunt for Dracula)
“We are all drifting reefwards now, and faith is our only anchor.”
11. Dracula to Mina (when he forces her to drink his blood)
“The blood is life... and it shall be mine!”
12. Mina Harker's Journal (after Dracula's attack, struggling with her soul)
“Souls and memories can do strange things during trance.”
“Is it possible that love is all subjective, or all objective?”
13. Van Helsing (comforting Mina and the others in their darkest hour)
“Do not think that I am not sad, though I laugh.”
“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.' ... 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.”
14. Jonathan Harker's Journal (near the end, as they pursue Dracula)
“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.”
1405/04/07 - Sunday - June 28, 2026 - 11 : 18 : 37 AM
