'Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde' Quotes

Theatrical poster from a stage version of "Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde."

Unknown, published by the National Printing & Engraving Company, Chicago Modifications by Papa Lima Whiskey/Wikimedia Commons/CC BY 3.0

Robert Louis Stevenson made literary history with his novel "Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." This story of the dual personality being personified during a medical experiment has been told and re-told in adaptations since it was first published in 1886. The novel became so popular that the phrase "Jekyll and Hyde" has come to mean someone whose behavior changes based on the situation they're in. 

The Nature of Evil

"'I incline to Cain's heresy,' he used to say quaintly. 'I let my brother go to the devil in his own way.'"

Mr. Gabriel Utterson, Chapter 1

"The last I think; for, O poor old Harry Jekyll, if ever I read Satan's signature upon a face, it is on that of your new friend."

Mr. Gabriel Utterson, Chapter 2

"My fears incline to the same point. Evil, I fear, founded — evil was sure to come — of that connection. Ay truly, I believe you; I defer (for what purpose, God alone can tell) is still lurking in his victim's room. Well, let our name be vengeance."

Mr. Gabriel Utterson, Chapter 8

Quotes About Fear

"It was for one minute that I saw him, but the hair stood upon my head like quills. Sir, if that was my master, why had he a mask upon his face?"

Mr. Poole, Chapter 8

"'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!"

Dr. Lanyon, Chapter 9

On Jekyll and Hyde Behavior

"You start a question, and it's like starting a stone. You sit quietly on the top of a hill, and away the stone goes, starting others, and presently some bland old bird (the last you would have thought of) is knocked on the head in his own back garden and the family have to change their name. No, sir, I make it a rule of mine: the more it looks like Queer Street, the less I ask."

Mr. Enfield, Chapter 1

"I am painfully situated, Utterson; my position is a very strange — a very strange one. It is one of those affairs that cannot be mended by talking."

Dr. Jekyll, Chapter 3

"With every day, and from both sides of my intelligence, the moral and the intellectual, I thus drew steadily nearer to the truth, by whose partial discovery I have been doomed to such a dreadful shipwreck: that man is not truly one, but truly two."

Dr. Jekyll, Chapter 10

"Someday, Utterson, after I am dead, you may perhaps come to learn the right and wrong of this. I cannot tell you."

Dr. Lanyon, Chapter 6

On Endings

"I swear to God I will never set eyes on him again. I bind my honor to you that I am done with him in this world. It is all at an end. And indeed he does not want my help; you do not know him as I do; he is safe, he is quite safe; mark my words, he will never more be heard of."

Dr. Jekyll, Chapter 5

"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."

Dr. Jekyll, Chapter 10