Quotes from The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

“Quiet minds cannot be perplexed or frightened but go on in fortune or misfortune at their own private pace, like a clock during a thunderstorm. ”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, quote from The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

“If he be Mr. Hyde" he had thought, "I shall be Mr. Seek.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, quote from The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

“If I am the chief of sinners, I am the chief of sufferers also.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, quote from The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

“It is one thing to mortify curiosity, another to conquer it. ”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, quote from The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

“You must suffer me to go my own dark way.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, quote from The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

“With every day, and from both sides of my intelligence, the moral and the intellectual, I thus drew steadily nearer to the truth, by whose partial discovery I have been doomed to such a dreadful shipwreck: that man is not truly one, but truly two.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, quote from The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

“I learned to recognise the thorough and primitive duality of man; I saw that, of the two natures that contended in the field of my consciousness, even if I could rightly be said to be either, it was only because I was radically both.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, quote from The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

“I sat in the sun on a bench; the animal within me licking the chops of memory; the spiritual side a little drowsed, promising subsequent penitence, but not yet moved to begin.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, quote from The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

“There comes an end to all things; the most capacious measure is filled at last; and this brief condescension to evil finally destroyed the balance of my soul.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, quote from The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

“All human beings, as we meet them, are commingled out of good and evil: and Edward Hyde, alone, in the ranks of mankind, was pure evil.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, quote from The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

“You start a question, and it's like starting a stone. You sit quietly on the top of a hill; and away the stone goes, starting others...”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, quote from The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

“She had an evil face, smoothed by hypocrisy; but her manners were excellent.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, quote from The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

“Jekyll had more than a father's interest; Hyde had more than a son's indifference.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, quote from The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

“The most racking pangs succeeded: a grinding in the bones, deadly nausea, and a horror of the spirit that cannot be exceeded at the hour of birth or death. Then these agonies began swiftly to subside, and I came to myself as if out of a great sickness. There was something strange in my sensations, something indescribably sweet. I felt younger, lighter, happier in body; within I was conscious of a heady recklessness, a current of disordered sensual images running like a millrace in my fancy, a solution of the bonds of obligation, an unknown but innocent freedom of the soul. I knew myself, at the first breath of this new life, to be more wicked, tenfold more wicked, sold a slave to my original evil and the thought, in that moment, braced and delighted me like wine.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, quote from The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

“Here then, as I lay down the pen and proceed to seal up my confession, I bring the life of that unhappy Henry Jekyll to an end.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, quote from The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

“I incline to Cain's heresy," he used to say quaintly: "I let my brother go to the devil in his own way.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, quote from The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

“The less I understood of this farrago, the less I was in a position to judge of its importance.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, quote from The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

“I had learned to dwell with pleasure as a beloved daydream on the
thought of the separation of these elements. If each I told myself could be housed in separate identities life would be relieved of all that was unbearable the unjust might go his way delivered from the aspirations and remorse of his more upright twin and the just could walk steadfastly and securely on his upward path doing the good things in which he found his pleasure and no longer exposed to disgrace and penitence by the hands of this extraneous evil.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, quote from The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

“Some day...after I am dead, you may perhaps come to learn the right and wrong of this. I cannot tell you.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, quote from The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

“I have been made to learn that the doom and burden of our life is bound forever on man’s shoulders; and when the attempt is made to cast it off, it but returns upon us with more unfamiliar and more awful pressure.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, quote from The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

“I have been doomed to such a dreadful shipwreck: that man is not truly one, but truly two. I say two, because the state of my own knowledge does not pass beyond that point.
Others will follow, others will outstrip me on the same lines; and I hazard the guess that man will be ultimately known for a mere polity of multifarious, incongruous and independent denizens. I, for my part, from the nature of my life, advanced infallibly in one direction and in one direction only. It was on the moral side, and in my own person, that I learned to recognise the thorough and primitive duality of man; I saw that, of the two natures that contended in the field of my consciousness, even if I could rightly be said to be either, it was only because I was radically both; and from an early date, even before the course of my scientific discoveries had begun to suggest the most naked possibility of such a miracle, I had learned to dwell with pleasure, as a beloved daydream, on the
thought of the separation of these elements. If each, I told myself, could be housed in separate identities, life would be relieved of all that was unbearable;
the unjust might go his way, delivered from the aspirations and remorse of his more upright twin; and the just could walk steadfastly and securely on his upward path, doing the good things in which he found his pleasure, and no longer exposed to disgrace and penitence by the hands of this extraneous evil.

It was the curse of mankind that these incongruous faggots were thus bound together—that in the agonised womb of consciousness, these polar twins should be continuously struggling. How, then were they dissociated?”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, quote from The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

“Strange as my circumstances were, the terms of this debate
are as old and commonplace as man; much the same inducements and
alarms cast the die for any tempted and trembling sinner; and it
fell out with me, as it falls with so vast a majority of my
fellows, that I chose the better part and was found wanting in the
strength to keep to it.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, quote from The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

“I feel very strongly about putting questions; it partakes too much of the style of the day of judgement. You start a question, and it's like starting a stone. You sit quietly on the top of a hill; and away the stone goes, starting others; and presently some bland old bird (the last you would have thought of) is knocked on the head in his own back garden, and the family have to change their name. No, sir, I make it a rule of mine: the more it looks like Queer Street, the less I ask.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, quote from The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

“The secret to a happiness is a small ego. And a big wallet. Good wine helps, too. But that's not really a secret, is it?”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, quote from The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

“O my poor old Harry Jekyll, if ever I read Satan's signature upon a face, it is on that of your new friend.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, quote from The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

“I sometimes think if we knew all, we should be more glad to get away.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, quote from The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

“It was for one minute that I saw him, but the hair stood upon my head like quills. Sir, if that was my master, why had he a mask upon his face?”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, quote from The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

“This was the shocking thing; that the slime of the pit seemed to utter cries and voices; that the amorphous dust gesticulated and sinned; that what was dead, and had no shape, should usurp the offices of life. And this again, that that insurgent horror was knit to him closer than a wife, closer than an eye; lay caged in his flesh, where he heard it mutter and felt it struggle to be born; and at every hour of weakness, and in the confidence of slumber, prevailed against him, and deposed him out of life.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, quote from The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

“His affections, like ivy, were the growth of time, they implied no aptness in the object.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, quote from The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

“To cast in it with Hyde was to die a thousand interests and aspirations.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, quote from The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

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“finalement, éperdu d'amour et au comble de la frénésie érotique, je m'assis dans l'herbe et j'enlevai un de mes souliers en caoutchouc.

— Je vais le manger pour toi, si tu veux. Si elle le voulait I Ha! Mais bien sûr qu'elle le voulait, voyons! C'était une vraie petite femme. --- Elle posa son cerceau par terre et s'assit sur ses ta-lons. Je crus voir dans ses yeux une lueur d'estime. Je n'en demandais pas plus. Je pris mon canif et enta-mai le caoutchouc. Elle me regardait faire.

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J'avalai un morceau, puis un autre. Sous son regard enfin admiratif, je me sentais devenir vraiment un homme. Et j'avais raison. Je venais de faire mon apprentissage. J'entamai le caoutchouc encore plus profondément, soufflant un peu, entre les bouchées, et je continuai ainsi un bon moment, jusqu'à ce qu'une sueur froide me montât au front. Je continuai même un peu au-delà, serrant les dents, luttant contre la nausée, ramassant toutes mes forces pour demeurer sur le terrain, comme il me fallut le faire tant de fois, depuis, dans mon métier d'homme.

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Mon amour d'enfant m'inspira vingt ans plus tard mon premier roman Éducation européenne, et aussi certains passages du Grand Vestiaire.

Pendant longtemps, à travers mes pérégrinations, j'ai transporté avec moi un soulier d'enfant en caoutchouc, entamé au couteau. J'avais vingt-cinq ans, puis trente, puis quarante, mais le soulier était toujours là, à portée de la main. J'étais toujours prêt à m'y attabler, à donner, une fois de plus, le meilleur de moi-même. Ça ne s'est pas trouvé. Finalement, j'ai abandonné le soulier quelque part derrière moi. On ne vit pas deux fois.
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― T.H. White, quote from The Ill-Made Knight

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