Henry Jekyll Quotes

“Jekyll had more than a father's interest; Hyde had more than a son's indifference.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, 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

“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, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Other Stories

“I rushed to the mirror. At the sight that met my eyes, my blood was changed to something thin and icy. Yes, I had gone to bed Henry Jekyll, I had awakened Edward Hyde. How was this to be explained? I asked myself; and then, with another bound of terror - how was it to be remedied?”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

“O God!' I screamed, and 'O God!' again and again; for there before my eyes--pale and shaken, and half fainting, and groping before him with his hands, like a man restored from death--there stood Henry Jekyll!”
― Robert Louis Stevenson

“The last, I think; for, 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, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde [and The Bottle Imp]

“Of course freedom for Hyde proves another form of bondage for Jekyll, just as in Hogg's book Wringham's 'Election' results not in liberation, as he imagines, but slavery to Gil-martin. For Jekyll as for Wringham there is a continual development and deterioration, so that in the end he finds himself going to sleep as Jekyll and waking as Hyde, with no control over events. He is mortally afraid that 'the balance of my nature might be permanently overthrown, the power of voluntary change be forfeited, and the character of Edward Hyde become irrevocably mine.”
― J.B. Pick, The Great Shadow House: Essays on the Metaphysical Tradition in Scottish Fiction