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Bram Stoker

Irish novelist and short story writer (1847–1912)

Abraham Stoker (8 November 1847 – 20 April 1912) was an Irish novelist and short story writer who wrote under the name Bram Stoker, and was the author of the horror novel Dracula.

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

Quotes

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  • "I was naturally thoughtful, and the leisure of long illness gave opportunity for many thoughts which were fruitful according to their kind in later years."
    • Bram Stoker [1]
  • In my College days I had been Auditor of the Historical Society — a post which corresponds to the Presidency of the Union in Oxford or Cambridge — and had got medals, or certificates, for History, Composition and Oratory. I had been President of the Philosophical Society; had got Honours in pure mathematics. I had won numerous silver cups for races of various kinds. I had played for years in the University football team, where I had received the honour of a “cap”! I was physically immensely strong. In fact I feel justified in saying I represented in my own person something of that aim of university education mens sana in corpore sano
    • Bram Stoker,Stoker 1906, Vol. l, p.32. [2]


  • Do not grieve for her! Who knows, but she may have found the joy she sought? Love and patience are all that make for happiness in this world; or in the world of the past or of the future; of the living or the dead. She dreamed her dream; and that is all that any of us can ask.

Dracula (1897)

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Main article: Dracula (novel)
 
You think to baffle me, you—with your pale faces all in a row, like sheep in a butcher's.
  • We are in Transylvania, and Transylvania is not England. Our ways are not your ways, and there shall be to you many strange things.
    • Dracula to Jonathan Harker
  • Listen to them — the children of the night. What music they make.
    • Dracula describing the howling of wolves to Jonathan Harker
  • No man knows till he has suffered from the night how sweet and dear to his heart and eye the morning can be.
    • Jonathan Harker
  • Despair has its own calms.
    • Jonathan Harker
  • One and all we felt that the holy calm that lay like sunshine over the wasted face and form was only an earthly token and symbol of the calm that was to reign for ever.
  • You think to baffle me, you—with your pale faces all in a row, like sheep in a butcher's.
    • Dracula, having found Jonathan Harker, Quincey Morris and Arthur Holmwood in his house
  • Seven years ago we all went through the flames. And the happiness of some of us since then is, we think, well worth the pain we endured.
    • Jonathan Harker

Personal Reminiscences of Henry Irving (1907)

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The fame of an actor is won in minutes and seconds, not in years.
Full text online
 
The man riveted my attention. He was dark, and forceful, and masterful, and ruthless. I have never seen so iron a countenance.
  • Logically speaking, even the life of an actor has no preface. He begins, and that is all. And such beginning is usually obscure; but faintly remembered at the best. Art is a completion; not merely a history of endeavour. It is only when completeness has been obtained that the beginnings of endeavour gain importance, and that the steps by which it has been won assume any shape of permanent interest. After all, the struggle for supremacy is so universal that the matters of hope and difficulty of one person are hardly of general interest. When the individual has won out from the huddle of strife, the means and steps of his succeeding become of interest, either historically or in the educational aspect — but not before. From every life there may be a lesson to some one; but in the teeming millions of humanity such lessons can but seldom have any general or exhaustive force. The mere din of strife is too incessant for any individual sound to carry far. Fame, who rides in higher atmosphere, can alone make her purpose heard. Well did the framers of picturesque idea understand their work when in her hand they put a symbolic trumpet.
    • Preface
  • The fame of an actor is won in minutes and seconds, not in years. The latter are only helpful in the recurrence of opportunities; in the possibilities of repetition. It is not feasible, therefore, adequately to record the progress of his work. Indeed that work in its perfection cannot be recorded; words are, and can be, but faint suggestions of awakened emotion. The student of history can, after all, but accept in matters evanescent the judgment of contemporary experience. Of such, the weight of evidence can at best incline in one direction; and that tendency is not susceptible of further proof. So much, then, for the work of art that is not plastic and permanent. There remains therefore but the artist. Of him the other arts can make record in so far as external appearance goes. Nay, more, the genius of sculptor or painter can suggest — with an understanding as subtle as that of the sun-rays which on sensitive media can depict what cannot be seen by the eye — the existence of these inner forces and qualities whence accomplished works of any kind proceed. It is to such art that we look for the teaching of our eyes. Modern science can record something of the actualities of voice and tone. Writers of force and skill and judgment can convey abstract ideas of controlling forces and purposes; of thwarting passions; of embarrassing weaknesses; of all the bundle of inconsistencies which make up an item of concrete humanity. From all these may be derived some consistent idea of individuality. This individuality is at once the ideal and the objective of portraiture.
    • Preface
  • I could not but be struck by the strangers. The lady was a big, handsome blonde woman, clever-looking and capable. But the man riveted my attention. He was dark, and forceful, and masterful, and ruthless. I have never seen so iron a countenance. I did not have much time to analyse the face; the bustle of arrival prevented that. But an instant was enough to make up my mind about him. We separated in the carriage after cordial wishes that we might meet again. When we were on the platform, I asked Irving:
    "Who is that man?"
    "Why," he said, " I thought I introduced you!"
    "So you did, but you did not mention the names of the others!" He looked at me for an instant and said inquiringly as though something had struck him:
    "Tell me, why do you want to know?"
    "Because," I answered, "I never saw any one like him. He is steel! He would go through you like a sword!"
    "You are right!" he said. "But I thought you knew him. That is Burton — Captain Burton who went to Mecca!
  • My first impression of the man as of steel was consolidated and enhanced. He told us, amongst other things, of the work he had in hand. Three great books were partially done. The translation of the Arabian Nights, the metrical translation of Camoëns, and the Book of the Sword. These were all works of vast magnitude and requiring endless research. But he lived to complete them all.
    • On a later meeting of Richard Francis Burton, on 8 February 1879, in, Vol. 1, p. 225
  • Burton had a most vivid way of putting things — especially of the East. He had both a fine imaginative power and a memory richly stored not only from study but from personal experience. As he talked, fancy seemed to run riot in its alluring power; and the whole world of thought seemed to flame with gorgeous colour. Burton knew the East. Its brilliant dawns and sunsets; its rich tropic vegetation, and its arid fiery deserts; its cool, dark mosques and temples; its crowded bazaars; its narrow streets; its windows guarded for out-looking and from in-looking eyes; the pride and swagger of its passionate men, and the mysteries of its veiled women; its romances; its beauty; its horrors.
    • On a meeting of Richard Francis Burton on 18 September 1886, Vol. 1, p. 230

Dracula's Guest (1914)

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Go home, Johann — Walpurgis nacht doesn't concern Englishmen.
  • Go home, Johann — Walpurgis nacht doesn't concern Englishmen.
    • Jonathan Harker
  • THE DEAD TRAVEL FAST
    • Inscription found on the tomb of Countess Dolingen of Gratz by Jonathan Harker
  • Be careful of my guest — his safety is most precious to me. Should aught happen to him, or if he be missed, spare nothing to find him and ensure his safety. He is English and therefore adventurous. There are often dangers from snow and wolves and night. Lose not a moment if you suspect harm to him. I answer your zeal with my fortune.
    • Telegram to Bistritz from Count Dracula.

Quotes about

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  • As to its effect, I had no adequate words. I can only say that after a few seconds of stony silence following his collapse I burst out into something like a violent fit of hysterics…. In those moments of our mutual emotion he too had found a friend and knew it. Soul had looked into soul! From that hour began a friendship as profound, as close, as lasting as can be between two men.
    • New York Times,The incident took place on the evening of 3 Dec 1876: Stoker 1906, Vol. 1, pp.31-3. [2]
  • Much has been said of his relation to Henry Irving, but I wonder how many were really aware of the whole depth and significance of that association. Bram seemed to give up his life to it. .. I say without any hesitation that never have I seen, never do I expect to see, such absorption of one man’s life in the life of another.
    • Hall Caine, “Bram Stoker. The Story of a Great Friendship”, The Daily Telegraph, 24 April 1912: 16. Caine, as “Hommy Beg”, was the dedicatee of Dracula, as he explains in this obituary account of Stoker’s life.<ref name="ref2">
  • Tennyson had at times that lifting of the upper lip which shows the canine tooth, and which is so marked an indication of militant instinct.
    • Stoker 1906, Vol. 1, p. 167.<ref name="ref2">
  • He have done this alone; all alone! from a ruin tomb in a forgotten land. What more may he not do when the greater world of thought is open to him?
    • Stoker 1983, p. 17, p.321.<ref name="ref2">
  • gothics are slow. I had somebody that had never read Dracula before and they read it and they told me, “It’s just a bunch of journal entries. It’s such a boring piece of crap.” And I said, “Yes, it is.” Well, not just journal entries, but like train tape timetables and lots of stuff. It does tell a story, and it does get kind of creepy, but they wanted the vampire jumping out on page two and biting into somebody, and that just doesn’t happen.
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  1. ↑ https://americanliterature.com/author/bram-stoker
  2. ↑ a b https://victorianfictionresearchguides.org/bram-stoker/
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