The Jewel of Seven Stars
Quotes from the Book
There are darknesses in life and there are lights, and you are one of the lights, the light of all lights.
We learn from failure, not from success!
Once again...welcome to my house. Come freely. Go safely; and leave something of the happiness you bring.
I am longing to be with you, and by the sea, where we can talk together freely and build our castles in the air.
There is a reason why all things are as they are.
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.
Remember my friend, that knowledge is stronger than memory, and we should not trust the weaker
I want you to believe...to believe in things that you cannot.
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, and with such unknown horror 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.
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.
Denn die Todten reiten Schnell. (For the dead travel fast.)
How good and thoughtful he is; the world seems full of good men--even if there are monsters in it.
I sometimes think we must be all mad and that we shall wake to sanity in strait-waistcoats.
No one but a woman can help a man when he is in trouble of the heart.
Though sympathy alone can't alter facts, it can help to make them more bearable.
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.
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 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.
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. 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 labor, what it may be.
Doctor, you don't know what it is to doubt everything, even yourself. No, you don't; you couldn't with eyebrows like yours.
Oh, my dear, if you only knew how strange is the matter regarding which I am here, it is you who would laugh. I have learned not to think little of any one's belief, no matter how strange it may be. I have tried to keep an open mind, and it is not the ordinary things of life that could close it, but the strange things, the extraordinary things, the things that make one doubt if they be mad or sane.
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.
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.
I suppose that we women are such cowards that we think a man will save us from fears, and we marry him.
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?
She has man's brain--a brain that a man should have were he much gifted--and woman's heart. The good God fashioned her for a purpose, believe me when He made that so good combination.
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.
Euthanasia" is an excellent and comforting word! I am grateful to whoever invented it.
There was a deliberate voluptuousness that was both thrilling and repulsive. And as she arched her neck she actually licked her lips like an animal till I could see in the moonlight the moisture Then lapped the white, sharp teeth. Lower and lower went her head. I closed my eyes in a languorous ecstasy and waited.
Did you know?
- Stoker took the name Dracula from William Wilkinson's 1820 history of Wallachia and Moldavia.
- The novel was originally titled The Un-Dead before publication.
- It is written as an epistolary novel, assembled from journals, letters, telegrams, and newspaper clippings.
- Stoker is said to have encountered source material for the book while holidaying in Whitby, England.
About Bram Stoker
More by Bram Stoker
The Jewel of Seven Stars
About the book
Dracula, published in 1897, is Bram Stoker's Gothic horror novel told through an assembled dossier of journal entries, letters, telegrams, and newspaper clippings. It opens with the young English solicitor Jonathan Harker traveling to Transylvania to help the mysterious Count Dracula purchase property in England, only to discover he is a prisoner in the Count's castle and that his host is a vampire. When Dracula relocates to England, a small band led by the Dutch professor Abraham Van Helsing sets out to understand and destroy him.
At its heart the book weaves together anxieties of the late Victorian era: the clash between ancient superstition and modern science, the fragility of sexual and social order, and the fear of foreign contagion invading a confident empire. The vampire's power to corrupt the innocent, and the group's reliance on both new technology and old folklore to fight him, give the novel its enduring tension between rationalism and the supernatural.
Though only a modest success in Stoker's lifetime, Dracula became one of the most influential works in horror and helped fix the modern image of the vampire in popular culture. It has never gone out of print and has inspired hundreds of stage, film, and television adaptations, making Count Dracula one of the most recognizable characters in Western fiction.
Key characters
- Count DraculaTransylvanian nobleman and vampire antagonist
- Jonathan HarkerEnglish solicitor who first encounters Dracula at his castle
- Mina HarkerJonathan's fiancee and later wife, central to the hunt for Dracula
- Lucy WestenraMina's friend who becomes one of Dracula's victims
- Professor Abraham Van HelsingDutch doctor and vampire hunter who leads the group opposing Dracula
- Dr. John SewardAsylum director and one of the vampire hunters
- Arthur HolmwoodLucy's fiance who joins the group opposing Dracula
Book details
- First published
- 1897
- Length
- 390 pages
- Reading time
- 7 hours
- Author
- Bram Stoker
- Genre
- Classics
- Goodreads rating
- 4.03 (1.5M ratings) →
- First line
- “3 May. Bistritz.-Left Munich at 8:35 P. M., on 1st May, arriving at Vienna early next morning; should have arrived at 6:46, but train was an hour late.”
Movie & TV adaptations
- IMDb
- IMDb
If you liked this, read…
- 1FrankensteinFoundational Gothic horror exploring science and monstrousness
- 2CarmillaEarlier Gothic vampire novella that predates and influenced Dracula
- 3The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr HydeVictorian tale of duality and hidden monstrous nature
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