jacob’s Reviews > The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde > Status Update

"What he told me... I cannot bring my mind to set on paper. I saw what I saw, I heard what I heard, & my soul sickened at it; & yet, now that sight has faded from my eyes I ask myself if I believe it, & I cannot answer. My life is shaken to its roots; sleep has left me; the deadliest terror sits by me at all hours of the day & night; I feel that my days are numbered, & that I must die; & yet I shall die incredulous."

"And [he] . . . brooded awhile on his own past, groping in all the corners of memory . . . His past was fairly blameless; few men could read the rolls of their life with less apprehension; yet he was humbled to the dust by the many ill things he had done, & raised up again into a sober & fearful gratitude by the many that he had come so near to doing, yet avoided.

"...[H]itherto it was his ignorance of Mr Hyde that had swelled his indignation; now, by a sudden turn, it was his knowledge. It was bad enough when the name was but a name of which he could learn no more. It was worse when it began to be clothed upon with detestable attributes; & out of the shifting, insubstantial mists that had so long baffled his eye, there leaped up the sudden, definite presentment of a fiend."

"It is the mark of a modest man to accept his friendly circle ready made from the hands of opportunity; and that was the lawyer's way. His friends were those of his own blood, or those whom he had known the longest; his affections, like ivy, were the growth of time, they implied no aptness in the object."