Quotation from: Dracula

Written by: Bram Stoker


"There are such beings as vampires, some of us have evidence that they
exist. Even had we not the proof of our own unhappy experience, the
teachings and the records of the past give proof enough for sane
peoples. I admit that at the first I was sceptic. Were it not that
through long years I have trained myself to keep an open mind, I could
not have believed until such time as that fact thunder on my ear. 'See!
See! I prove, I prove.' Alas! Had I known at first what now I know,
nay, had I even guess at him, one so precious life had been spared to
many of us who did love her. But that is gone, and we must so work,
that other poor souls perish not, whilst we can save. The nosferatu
do not die like the bee when he sting once. He is only stronger, and
being stronger, have yet more power to work evil. This vampire which
is amongst us is of himself so strong in person as twenty men, he is
of cunning more than mortal, for his cunning be the growth of ages, he
have still the aids of necromancy, which is, as his etymology imply,
the divination by the dead, and all the dead that he can come nigh to
are for him at command; he is brute, and more than brute; he is devil
in callous, and the heart of him is not; he can, within his range,
direct the elements, the storm, the fog, the thunder; he can command
all the meaner things, the rat, and the owl, and the bat, the moth,
and the fox, and the wolf, he can grow and become small; and he can at
times vanish and come unknown. How then are we to begin our strike to
destroy him? How shall we find his where, and having found it, how
can we destroy? My friends, this is much, it is a terrible task that
we undertake, and there may be consequence to make the brave shudder.
For if we fail in this our fight he must surely win, and then where
end we? Life is nothings, I heed him not. But to fail here, is not
mere life or death. It is that we become as him, that we henceforward
become foul things of the night like him, without heart or conscience,
preying on the bodies and the souls of those we love best. To us
forever are the gates of heaven shut, for who shall open them to us
again? We go on for all time abhorred by all, a blot on the face of
God's sunshine, an arrow in the side of Him who died for man. But we
are face to face with duty, and in such case must we shrink? For me,
I say no, but then I am old, and life, with his sunshine, his fair
places, his song of birds, his music and his love, lie far behind. You
others are young. Some have seen sorrow, but there are fair days yet
in store. What say you?"

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