The Vampyre and Other Tales of the Macabre Quotes

“We are rarely wrong when we act from impulse”
― Letitia E. Landon, The Vampyre and Other Tales of the Macabre

“The title of the elder branch falling at length to him, he obtained an important embassy, which served as an excuse for hastening the marriage,”
― John William Polidori, The Vampyre and Other Tales of the Macabre

“Courage, my dear fellow,’ said I, ‘there is no space too great to allow of the sun’s rays enlivening it—neither is that heart in existence which hope may not inhabit.”
― John William Polidori, The Vampyre and Other Tales of the Macabre

“I thought in my heart how seldom, even in this world, justice fails to overtake the murderer, and to enforce the righteous judgment of God, ‘that whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed’.”
― John William Polidori, The Vampyre and Other Tales of the Macabre

“I answered in the affirmative; and he continued—‘Then you must be aware that if my son Edward were, which God forbid, the unprincipled, reckless man, you pretend to think him’—(here he spoke very slowly, as if he intended that every word which escaped him, should be registered in my memory, while at the same time the expression of his countenance underwent a gradual but horrible change, and the eyes which he fixed upon me became so darkly vivid, that I almost lost sight of every thing else)—‘if he were what you have described him, think you, girl, he could find no briefer means than wedding contracts to gain his ends—’twas but to gripe your slender neck until the breath had stopped, and lands, and lakes, and all were his.”
― John William Polidori, The Vampyre and Other Tales of the Macabre

“Yes,’ said he, half aloud, ‘a few links bring all life before us: here is adventure—excitement—the toil and the triumph of the body. I wish I had been born in those stirring times—life spent half on horseback, half at the banquet board—when you had but to look round the tournament, fix on the brightest smile, and then win your lady with your sword. Action—action in the sunshine—passion—but little feeling, and less thought: such was meant to be our existence. But we refine—we sadden and we subdue—we call up the hidden and evil spirits of the inner world—we wake from their dark repose those who will madden us.”
― John William Polidori, The Vampyre and Other Tales of the Macabre

“To the extreme of this feeling I was ever a victim. The heavy responsibility, often suddenly and unexpectedly imposed—the struggle for success, when success was all but hopeless—the intense anxiety for the arrival of those critical periods which change the character of a malady, and divest it of some of its dangers, or invest it with new ones—the despondence when that period has come only to confirm all the worst symptoms, and shut out every prospect of recovery—and, last of all, that most trying, of all the trying duties of my profession, the breaking to the perhaps unconscious relatives, that my art had failed, my resources were exhausted, in a word, that there was no longer a hope. These things have preyed on me for weeks, for months long, and many”
― John William Polidori, The Vampyre and Other Tales of the Macabre

“Bah, bah!’ cried the old man petulantly. ‘Human nature is the same in all ages and countries. Every day—every city—produces some monstrous wickedness, secret or discovered, arising from the triumphs of ungoverned passion;—from hatred,—lust,—revenge,—or mere blood-thirstiness. The crime in which this piece of ruthless machinery had its rise, was done in my own lifetime, in a place which I weekly and calmly traverse. The perpetrator went down to the grave, I will not say unpunished, but undiscovered. No one pitied the victim,—no one cursed the assassin. The whole story is, and is better, buried in oblivion.”
― John William Polidori, The Vampyre and Other Tales of the Macabre

“There is a kind of crystallization in the circumstances of one’s life. A peculiar turn of mind draws to itself events fitted to its particular nucleus, and it is frequently a subject of wonder why one man meets with more remarkable things than another, when it is owing merely to a difference of natural character.”
― John William Polidori, The Vampyre and Other Tales of the Macabre

“Ay,’ he continued, as if unaware of my presence, ‘blessed indeed are they who die in the Lord; but the wicked man and the persecutor has no bonds in his death; he may flourish for a season as a green bay-tree; he may enlarge his bounds, and cast forth his arms in his pride; but the time shall come when they will seek him, but shall not find him, and the place which knew him once shall know him no more for ever:* “For why? the way of godly men Unto the Lord is known; Whereas the way of wicked men Shall quite be overthrown.” ’*”
― John William Polidori, The Vampyre and Other Tales of the Macabre

“SIR,—Although I sent the following narrative to an Edinburgh newspaper, with the editor of which I was well acquainted; yet he refused to give it publicity, on the ground that it was only a dream of the imagination: but if a man cannot be believed in what he hears and sees, what is he to be believed in?”
― John William Polidori, The Vampyre and Other Tales of the Macabre

“I have likewise heard it stated, that one boy fell a-kicking the coffin on his way to the grave, who is still living and lifelike, and that a girl, as the doctors were cutting her up, threw herself off the table. I cannot vouch for the truth of these singular and cruel incidents, although I heard them related as facts; but with regard to my own case there can be no dispute.”
― John William Polidori, The Vampyre and Other Tales of the Macabre

“But now the rest of the adjoining cotters rose in a body, and insisted on turning me out. Is it not strange, Sir, that this most horrible of all pestilences should deprive others, not only of natural feeling, but of reason? I could make no resistance although they had flung me over the dunghill, as they threatened to do; but the two women acted with great decision, and dared them to touch me or any one in their house.”
― John William Polidori, The Vampyre and Other Tales of the Macabre

“that the old man should insist upon his son studying medicine and surgery, when every one knows he will inherit at least ten thousand a-year.’—‘Nothing to do with it,’ was the argument of the father; ‘who can tell what is to happen to funded, or even landed property, in England? The empire of disease takes in the world; and in all its quarters, medical knowledge may be made the key to competency and wealth.”
― John William Polidori, The Vampyre and Other Tales of the Macabre

“The young men of this generation mock the words of age; it would be well if they mocked nothing else; but what can we expect of those who doubt all and believe nothing?”
― John William Polidori, The Vampyre and Other Tales of the Macabre

“Some one had that day been buried, and less care than is usual had been taken in closing up the grave, for, as I went forward, my foot struck the fragment of a bone. I lifted it hastily, and was about to throw it away, when the old man said, ‘Stay, thoughtless boy, that which you touch so carelessly was once part of a living creature, born in pain and nursed tenderly, was beloved, and had a body to rot in the grave, and a soul to ascend into heaven—touch not, therefore, the dust of thy brother rudely.”
― John William Polidori, The Vampyre and Other Tales of the Macabre

“The morning after I received this message, I arose and resumed my usual occupations; but from whatever cause it may have proceeded, I felt a sense of approaching evil hang heavily upon me; the beats of my pulse were languid, and an undefinable feeling of anxiety pervaded my whole spirit; even my face was pale, and my eye so heavy, that my father and brothers concluded me to be ill; an opinion which I thought at the time to be correct; for I felt exactly that kind of depression which precedes a severe fever. I could not understand what I experienced, nor can I yet, except by supposing that there is in human nature some mysterious faculty, by which, in coming calamities, the approach throws forward the shadow of some fearful evil, and that it is possible to catch a dark anticipation of the sensations which they subsequently produce. For my part I can neither analyze nor define it; but on that day I knew it by painful experience, and so have a thousand others in similar circumstances.”
― John William Polidori, The Vampyre and Other Tales of the Macabre

“Her earnestness and apparent belief of what she narrated, excited the interest even of Aubrey; and often, as she told him the tale of the living vampyre, who had passed years amidst his friends, and dearest ties, forced every year, by feeding upon the life of a lovely female to prolong his existence for the ensuing months, his blood would run cold, whilst he attempted to laugh her out of such idle and horrible fantasies”
― John William Polidori, The Vampyre and Other Tales of the Macabre

“the partner of his guilt, should be hurled from the pinnacle of unsullied virtue, down to the lowest abyss of infamy and degradation: in fine, that all those females whom he had sought, apparently on account of their virtue, had, since his departure, thrown even the mask aside, and had not scrupled to expose the whole deformity of their vices to the public gaze.”
― John William Polidori, The Vampyre and Other Tales of the Macabre

“Hitherto, Aubrey had had no opportunity of studying Lord Ruthven’s character, and now he found, that, though many more of his actions were exposed to his view, the results offered different conclusions from the apparent motives to his conduct. His companion was profuse in his liberality;—the idle, the vagabond, and the beggar, received from his hand more than enough to relieve their immediate wants. But Aubrey could not avoid remarking, that it was not upon the virtuous, reduced to indigence by the misfortunes attendant even upon virtue, that he bestowed him alms;—these were sent from the door with hardly suppressed sneers; but when the profligate came to ask something, not to relieve his wants, but to allow him to wallow in his lust, or to sink him still deeper in his iniquity, he was sent away with rich charity. This was, however, attributed by him to the greater importunity of the vicious, which generally prevails over the retiring bashfulness of the virtuous indigent.”
― John William Polidori, The Vampyre and Other Tales of the Macabre

“he soon formed this object into the hero of a romance, and determined to observe the offspring of his fancy, rather than the person before him.”
― John William Polidori, The Vampyre and Other Tales of the Macabre

“His peculiarities caused him to be invited to every house; all wished to see him, and those who had been accustomed to violent excitement, and now felt the weight of ennui, were pleased at having something in their presence capable of engaging their attention. In spite of the deadly hue of his face, which never gained a warmer tint, either from the blush of modesty, or from the strong emotion of passion, though its form and outline were beautiful, many of the female hunters after notoriety attempted to win his attentions, and gain, at least, some marks of what they might term affection;”
― John William Polidori, The Vampyre and Other Tales of the Macabre

“May. Thackeray’s Catherine in Fraser’s (seven instalments ending in Feb. 1840).”
― John William Polidori, The Vampyre and Other Tales of the Macabre