This printable quote bank for Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde gives students a structured reference of canonical lines, organised so revision can move from memorisation toward confident close analysis. It is designed to sit alongside the longer study guide at /revision/texts/jekyll-and-hyde and the deeper essay support at /analysis/jekyll-hyde.
How the bank is organised
Quotes are grouped two ways so students can revise either by figure or by idea:
- By character: Henry Jekyll, Edward Hyde, Gabriel Utterson, Hastie Lanyon.
- By theme: duality, science and the limits of knowledge, repression, Victorian respectability and reputation.
For each grouping, lines are listed with the chapter they appear in so quotations can be re-read in context. Students are encouraged to underline three or four high-utility quotes per cluster rather than trying to learn every line.
Sample AO2 hooks
The three worked examples below show how a single Stevenson quotation can open up a precise comment on language, form or structure for AO2.
1. "I am quite sure of him." Jekyll's flat, monosyllabic reassurance to Utterson about Hyde feels deliberately closed. The certainty is grammatical rather than evidential: Jekyll offers no proof, only conviction. Stevenson uses the line to expose how easily a respectable speaker can shut down inquiry, and how the lawyer's professional trust in a gentleman's word becomes a structural weakness in the novella's investigation.
2. "Man is not truly one, but truly two." The chiasmus pivots on the repeated "truly," staging the very split it describes. The negation "not truly one" hesitates before the assertion "but truly two," so the sentence rhythm enacts division. Within Jekyll's "Full Statement," the line operates as a thesis: every later transformation is a test of this claim, which makes it a useful quotation for arguments about duality across the whole text.
3. "ape-like fury" Stevenson's simile collapses Hyde into something pre-human. Late-Victorian readers, alert to debates around evolution and degeneration, would have heard a moral as well as a physical comparison. The compound adjective is doing structural work too: across the Carew murder scene, animal imagery accumulates around Hyde, so this phrase is a strong anchor quotation when tracing how Stevenson dehumanises him.
Using the bank in revision
Print the sheet and mark which quotes you can already recall, which you half-know, and which are new. Pair each retained quote with one short AO2 hook of your own, modelled on the examples above, then test recall by writing the quote and hook from memory the next day.
For longer-form essay practice and full chapter walkthroughs, follow the links at the top of this page.