The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

The most racking pangs succeeded: a grinding in the bones deadly nausea and a horror of the spirit that cannot be exceeded at the hour of birth or death. Then these agonies began swiftly to subside and I came to myself as if out of a great sickness. There was something strange in my sensations something indescribably new and from its very novelty incredibly sweet. I felt younger lighter happier in body; within I was conscious of a heady recklessness a current of disordered sensual images running like a millrace in my fancy a solution of the bonds of obligation an unknown but not an innocent freedom of the soul. I knew myself at the first breath of this new life to be more wicked tenfold more wicked sold a slave to my original evil; and the thought in that moment braced and delighted me like wine. I stretched out my hands exulting in the freshness of these sensations; and in the act I was suddenly aware that I had lost in stature. . . .The novellas impact is such that it has become a part of the English language with the very phrase Jekyll and Hyde coming to mean a person who is vastly different in moral character from one situation to the next.