Over his fictional works, diary entries, literary criticisms, and autobiographies, Bram Stoker unloads a number of pertinent and important quotes that reveal so much about his own outlook on life.
On Completion
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.
Personal Reminiscences of Henry Irving
In this quote about Henry Irving, the popular and talented actor with whom Stoker worked, Stoker seems to encapsulate the life of successful artists. It seemed like they emerge on the scene fully formed, but that is far from the truth as the background toiling. The efforts to rid oneself of imperfections go as much into making the artist successful. But interest in that backstory itself is dependent on the success of the artist- that is, his bringing to completion his art. If he is not successful, nobody would be interested in his beginnings and he would be lost to history.
Learning
We learn great things from little experiences. The history of ages is but an indefinite repetition of the history of hours. The record of a soul is but a multiple of the story of a moment.
Jewel of the Seven Stars
With this quote, Stoker reminds us that our source of wisdom about the world need not come from grand adventures but also from little day-to-day experiences. We can learn great, important things just by going through life at a simple enough pace.
Nothing is too small. I counsel you, put down in record even your doubts and surmises. Hereafter it may be of interest to you to see how true you guess. We learn from failure, not from success!
Dracula
Van Helsing’s injunction to his comrades to note down comprehensively the full pickings of their senses, whatever their prejudices might be, is symbolic of the primacy of a scientific approach to knowledge gathering. Nothing should be discounted and every detail should be recorded. All these might provide important information later on in ‘Dracula‘.
Love
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.
Jewel of the Seven Stars
This quote emphasizes the importance of love and patience in securing one’s happiness. Essentially, notwithstanding one’s circumstances, the degree of our love and passion for something, coupled with our willingness to be patient, to sacrifice instant gratification, urgent worry, and shortsighted ambitions, are key determinants of how happy we would be.
Love is, after all, a selfish thing; and it throws a black shadow on anything between which and the light it stands.
Jewel of the Seven Stars
Love is a major theme in Stoker’s Jewel of the Seven Stars. With this quote, Dracula using a character draws our attention to the selfish quality of love as regards its demands for exclusivity. This of course means others outside this ring of light cast by love and thrust into the shadows- victims to various degrees of the lover’s prejudices. Love is also selfish in the sense that it makes us disregard our own interests for its sake.
Relief
No man knows till he has suffered from the night how sweet and dear to his heart and eye the morning can be.
Dracula
This quote is as relevant to Jonathan Harker’s travails at Dracula’s castle as it is to our everyday struggles with life. The morning can be a stand-in for a new dawn, an end to our night of worries and persecutions. We would not really appreciate the morning, with its promise of reprieve, until we have faced the horrors of the night.
Women
The inscrutable laws of sex have so arranged that even a timid woman is not afraid of a fierce and haughty man
The Bram Stoker Bedside Companion: 10 Stories by the Author of Dracula
Here Stoker acknowledges the imbalance in both genders’ approaches to relationships. Whereas a small man might be afraid of a bigger man, a smaller woman might be more reasonably confident in winning this bigger man over. This has more to do with the smaller woman possessing physiological and biological value and utility whereas the small man offers none.
Sacrifice
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
Dracula
The attempt of the crew of light, that is, Van Helsing and Friends, to bring down Dracula came at enormous costs, but that was a sacrifice that assured present satisfaction and comfort for the participants and by extension, every other Englishman saved from Dracula’s vampiric threats.
FAQs
Where is Bram Stoker from?
Stoker was born to Irish parents living in Dublin, Ireland. Later he migrated to London, England
Did Stoker really meet with two U.S Presidents?
Yes. As part of Henry Irving’s entourage during his various tours of the United States, Stoker got to meet both Theodore Roosevelt and William McKinley.
How did Stoker meet Henry Irving?
While working for the Dublin Mail as a theatre critic, Stoker wrote reviews of Irving’s plays that impressed the Victorian actor. He arranged a meeting with Stoker as a result.
