Mina Murray Quotes

I am all in a sea of wonders. I doubt; I fear; I think strange things which I dare not confess to my own soul. God keep me, if only for the sake of those dear to me!

– Bram Stoker

Dracula, Chapter 2. Jonathan Harker, to himself, as he prepares for bed on his first night in Count Dracula’s castle. He is scared of Dracula and he also fears for his fiancée Mina, whom the Count has developed an interest in. Jonathan’s western European attitudes have blinded him to the superstition of the east and made him oblivious to the supernatural elements occurring around him.

At least God’s mercy is better than that of these monsters, and the precipice is steep and high. At its foot a man may sleep – as a man. Good-bye, all! Mina!

– Bram Stoker

Dracula, Chapter 4. In his journal, Jonathan Harker writes about his imprisonment in Dracula’s castle and his beloved Mina, whom he is unsure he will ever see again. The "monsters" he refers to are Dracula and his three Brides, having learned that they are far from human. He wonders if his only escape is to jump off the high precipice and kill himself and trust the mercy of God.

Another week gone, and no news from Jonathan, not even to Mr. Hawkins, from whom I have heard. Oh, I do hope he is not ill. He surely would have written. I look at that last letter of his, but somehow it does not satisfy me. It does not read like him, and yet it is his writing.

– Bram Stoker

Dracula, Chapter 6. Mina is worried that she has not heard from her fiancé Jonathan, who is a prisoner in Castle Dracula, but she doesn’t know that. She has received word from Hawkins, a one-line note saying Jonathan is leaving the castle, but it doesn’t sound at all like him.

I looked at her throat just now as she lay asleep, and the tiny wounds seem not to have healed. They are still open, and, if anything, larger than before, and the edges of them are faintly white. They are like little white dots with red centers. Unless they heal within a day or two, I shall insist on the doctor seeing about them.

– Bram Stoker

Dracula, Chapter 8. As Lucy fades away before her eyes and becomes more languid, her friend Mina becomes more concerned. Mina notices that the two wounds on Lucy’s thoat seem not to have healed but are even larger than before. This is where Dracula bit her and sucked her blood. This is foreshadowing of Lucy later turning into a vampire and drinking blood from children.

I feel very solemn, but very, very happy. Jonathan woke a little after the hour, and all was ready, and he sat up in bed, propped up with pillows. He answered his "I will" firmly and strongly. I could hardly speak; my heart was so full that even those words seemed to choke me.

– Bram Stoker

Dracula, Chapter 9. Mina and Jonathan are married by a chaplain. It is a bit solemn, she says, as he takes place at Jonathan’s bedside in Budapest, where he is recovering from his ordeal at Castle Dracula. Nevertheless she is very happy.

He was very pale, and his eyes seemed bulging out as, half in terror and half in amazement, he gazed at a tall, thin man, with a beaky nose and black moustache and pointed beard, I had a good view of him. His face was not a good face; it was hard, and cruel, and sensual, and his big white teeth, that looked all the whiter because his lips were so red, were pointed like an animal’s.

– Bram Stoker

Dracula, Chapter 13. Mina is concerned about Jonathan and how upset he is as they walk in Hyde Park, London. Then she turns around and sees the figure that has alarmed him – Jonathan is convinced that the man is Count Dracula.

The poise of the head strikes one at once as indicative of thought and power; the head is noble, well-sized, broad, and large behind the ears. The face, clean-shaven, shows a hard, square chin, a large, resolute, mobile mouth, a good-sized nose, rather straight, but with quick, sensitive nostrils, that seem to broaden as the big, bushy brows come down and the mouth tightens.

– Bram Stoker

Dracula, Chapter 14. Mina’s description of Professor Abraham Van Helsing after she meets him for the first time. She straight away gets a sense of his strength and intelligence. Just the kind of man you would feel safe with and trust, and she does.

I could not resist the temptation of mystifying him a bit – I suppose it is some of the taste of the original apple that remains still in our mouths – so I handed him the shorthand diary.

– Bram Stoker

Dracula, Chapter 14. Mina says this as she playfully hands Professor Van Helsing her shorhand diary of her conversations with Lucy, knowing that he will not be able to read it. She takes pride in being able to do something – write and read shorthand – that the great professor cannot do. At the same time she feels a little shame, as she recalls that the sin of pride caused the Fall and expulsion from the Garden of Eden. This is a reference to the Bible story in the Book of Genesis.

I have learned not to think little of any one’s belief, no matter how strange it be. I have tried to keep an open mind; and it is not the ordinary things of life that could close it, but the strange things, the extraordinary things, the things that make one doubt if they be mad or sane.

– Bram Stoker

Dracula, Chapter 14. Van Helsing in reply to Mina’s warning when she gives him a copy of Jonathan’s journal from his time with Count Dracula. She says he may find the events described unbelievable. But Van Helsing’s open mind allows him to embrace new technologies and what seems like the impossible, and also helps him counter Dracula’s evil.

She is one of God’s women, fashioned by His own hand to show us men and other women that there is a heaven where we can enter, and that its light can be here on earth. So true, so sweet, so noble, so little an egoist – and that, let me tell you, is much in this age, so skeptical and selfish.

– Bram Stoker

Dracula, Chapter 14. Van Helsing’s comment about Mina, who is the embodiment of womanly virtues of the Victorian era. His comment becomes important after Mina is bitten by Dracula and forced to drink his blood – it underlines how the Count turns innocent people into monsters.

She came at once, after saying pleasantly to Mr. Renfield, "Goodbye, and I hope I may see you often, under auspices pleasanter to yourself."
To which, to my astonishment, he replied, "Goodbye, my dear. I pray God I may never see your sweet face again. May He bless and keep you!"

– Bram Stoker

Dracula, Chapter 18. Renfield appears to have taken a shine to Mina and doesn’t wish to see her come to harm at the hands of Dracula. He knows that he is helping Dracula in his evil ways and seems to have some regrets about this. So he prays to God that he will never see Mina’s sweet face again – he wants her protected from the dark events that are to come. This foreshadows the special interest that Dracula will take in Mina, when he later subjects her to a number of attacks, including a particularly horrific one.
Close