From childhood’s hour I have not been. As others were, I have not seen. As others saw, I could not awaken. My heart to joy at the same tone. And all I loved, I loved alone.
The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins?
Experience has shown, and a true philosophy will always show, that a vast, perhaps the larger, portion of truth arises from the seemingly irrelevant.
It is by no means an irrational fancy that, in a future existence, we shall look upon what we think our present existence, as a dream.
I have great faith in fools – self-confidence my friends will call it.
Mysteries force a man to think, and so injure his health.
If we cannot comprehend God in his visible works, how then in his inconceivable thoughts, that call the works into being?
The idea of God, infinity, or spirit stands for the possible attempt at an impossible conception.
I have no faith in human perfectibility. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active – not more happy – nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago.
How is it that from beauty I have derived a type of unloveliness?—from the covenant of peace a simile of sorrow? But as, in ethics, evil is a consequence of good, so, in fact, out of joy is sorrow born.
You call it hope — that fire of fire!It is but agony of desire.
Sleep, those little slices of death — how I loathe them.
The death of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world.
True, nervous, very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am, but why will say that I am mad?! The disease had sharpened my senses, not destroyed, not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute.
Every poem should remind the reader that they are going to die.
Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe, and forget this lost Lenore!
And the life of the ebony clock went out with that of the last of the gay. And the flames of the tripods expired. And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.
At midnight, in the month of June, I stand beneath the mystic moon.
With me poetry has not been a purpose, but a passion.
I would define, in brief, the poetry of words as the rhythmical creation of beauty.
Poetry is the rhythmical creation of beauty in words.
I have been happy, though in a dream.I have been happy-and I love the theme:Dreams! in their vivid colouring of lifeAs in that fleeting, shadowy, misty strife
I have no words — alas! — to tellThe loveliness of loving well!
And here, in thought, to thee-In thought that can alone, Ascend thy empire and so be A partner of thy throne, By winged Fantasy, My embassy is given, Till secrecy shall knowledge be In the environs of Heaven.
As a poet and as a mathematician, he would reason well; as a mere mathematician, he could not have reasoned at all.
Music, when combined with a pleasurable idea, is poetry; music, without the idea, is simply music; the idea, without the music, is prose, from its very definitiveness.
A short story must have a single mood and every sentence must build towards it.
Depend upon it, after all, Thomas, Literature is the most noble of professions. In fact, it is about the only one fit for a man. For my own part, there is no seducing me from the path.
I was never really insane except upon occasions when my heart was touched.
All religion, my friend, is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination, and poetry.
All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.
Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.
Yet mad I am not…and very surely do I not dream.
Take this kiss upon the brow!And, in parting from you now,Thus much let me avow-You are not wrong, who deemThat my days have been a dream;Yet if hope has flown awayIn a night, or in a day,In a vision, or in
The ninety and nine are with dreams, content, but the hope of the world made new, is the hundredth man who is grimly bent on making those dreams come true.
There is no exquisite beauty… without some strangeness in the proportion.
Beauty of whatever kind, in its supreme development, invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears.
In beauty of face no maiden ever equaled her. It was the radiance of an opium-dream – an airy and spirit-lifting vision more wildly divine than the fantasies which hovered about the slumbering souls of the daughters of Delos.
When, indeed, men speak of Beauty, they mean, precisely, not a quality, as is supposed, but an effect – they refer, in short, just to that intense and pure elevation of soul – not of intellect, or of heart.
That pleasure which is at once the most pure, the most elevating and the most intense, is derived, I maintain, from the contemplation of the beautiful.
A feeling, for which I have no name, has taken possession of my soul.
Men have called me mad; but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence.
In the strange anomaly of my existence, feelings with me had never been of the heart, and my passions always were of the mind.
And have I not told you that what you mistake for madness is but over-acuteness of the sense?
I do believe God gave me a spark of genius, but he quenched it in misery.
You will observe that the stories told are all about money-seekers, not about money-finders.
So resolute is the world to despise anything which carries with it an air of simplicity.
Ah, dream too bright to last! Ah, starry Hope! that didst arise But to be overcast! A voice from out the Future cries, “On! on!” — but o’er the Past (Dim gulf!) my spirit hovering lies Mute, motionless, aghast.
Ah, not in knowledge is happiness, but in the acquisition of knowledge! In forever knowing, we are forever blessed; but to know all, were the curse of a fiend.
How had I deserved to be so blessed by such confessions? —how had I deserved to be so cursed with the removal of my beloved in the hour of her making them, But upon this subject I cannot bear to dilate.
The eye, like a shattered mirror, multiplies the images of sorrow.
If you wish to forget anything on the spot, make a note that this thing is to be remembered.
In our endeavors to recall to memory something long forgotten, we often find ourselves upon the very verge of remembrance, without being able, in the end, to remember.
Horrors of a nature most stern and most appalling would too frequently obtrude themselves upon my mind, and shake the innermost depths of my soul with the bare supposition of their possibility.
From childhood’s hour I have not beenAs others were – I have not seenAs others saw – I could not bringMy passions from a common spring –
It all depends on the robber’s knowledge of the loser’s knowledge of the robber. – Daupin
I have before suggested that a genuine blackguard is never without a pocket-handkerchief.
The scariest monsters are the ones that lurk within our souls…
Believe nothing you hear, and only one half that you see.
Even with the utterly lost, to whom life and death are equally jests, there are matters of which no jest can be made.
To be thoroughly conversant with Man’s heart, is to take our final lesson in the iron-clasped volume of Despair
A wrong is unredressed when retribution overtakes its redresser. It is equally unredressed when the avenger fails to make himself felt as such to him who has done the wrong.
I blush, I burn, I shudder, while I pen the damnable atrocity.
I have graven it within the hills, and my vengeance upon the dust within the rock.
To conceive the horror of my sensations is, I presume, utterly impossible; yet a curiosity to penetrate the mysteries of these awful regions predominates even over my despair, and will reconcile me to the most hideous aspect of death.
I was a child and she was a child, In this kingdom by the sea,But we loved with a love that was more than love— I and my Annabel Lee—
The true genius shudders at incompleteness — imperfection — and usually prefers silence to saying the something which is not everything that should be said.
All that we see and seem is but a dream within a dream.
The fury of a demon instantly possessed me. I knew myself no longer. My original soul seemed, at once, to take its flight from my body; and a more than fiendish malevolence, gin-nurtured, thrilled every fibre of my frame.
I continued, as was my wont, to smile in his face, and he did not perceive that my smile now was at the thought of his immolation.
For eyes we have no models in the remotely antique.
Deep in earth my love is lyingAnd I must weep alone.
Every moment of the nightForever changing placesAnd they put out the star-lightWith the breath from their pale faces
You are rich, respected, admired, beloved; you are happy, as once I was.
It is evident that we are hurrying onward to some exciting knowledge—some never-to-be-imparted secret, whose attainment is destruction.
Ah, Death, the spectre which sate at all feasts! How often, Monos, did we lose ourselves in speculations upon its nature! How mysteriously did it act as a check to human bliss – saying unto it “thus far, and no farther!
Enough,” he said; “the cough is a mere nothing; it will not kill me. I shall not die of a cough.” “True – true,” I replied;
In criticism, I will be bold, and as sternly, absolutely just with friend and foe. From this purpose nothing shall turn me.
A man’s grammar, like Caesar’s wife, should not only be pure, but above suspicion of impurity.
I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.
Now this is the point. You fancy me a mad. Madmen know nothing. But you should have seen me. You should have seen how wisely I proceeded…
I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell. How, then, am I mad?
I was cautious in what I said before the young lady; for I could not be sure that she was sane; and, in fact, there was a certain restless brilliancy about her eyes that half led me to imagine she was not.
But, for myself, the Earth’s records had taught me to look for widest ruin as the price of highest civilization.
Let him talk,” said Dupin, who had not thought it necessary to reply. “Let him discourse; it will ease his conscience, I a satisfied with having defeated him in his own castle.
Never to suffer would have been never to have been blessed.
Man’s real life is happy chiefly because he is ever expecting that it soon will be so.
Man’s real life is happy chiefly because he is ever expecting that it soon will be so.
Man’s real life is happy chiefly because he is ever expecting that it soon will be so.
Man’s real life is happy chiefly because he is ever expecting that it soon will be so.
Man’s real life is happy chiefly because he is ever expecting that it soon will be so.
Man’s real life is happy chiefly because he is ever expecting that it soon will be so.
Man’s real life is happy chiefly because he is ever expecting that it soon will be so.
Man’s real life is happy chiefly because he is ever expecting that it soon will be so.
Man’s real life is happy chiefly because he is ever expecting that it soon will be so.
Man’s real life is happy chiefly because he is ever expecting that it soon will be so.
On desperate seas long wont to roam Thy hyacinth hair they classic face Thy naiad airs have brought me home To the glory that was Greece And the grandeur that was Rome.
Once upon a midnight dreary while I pondered weak and weary Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore.
With me poetry has not been a purpose but a passion.
Man’s real life is happy chiefly because he is ever expecting that it soon will be so.
Of puns it has been said that those most dislike who are least able to utter them.
In efforts to soar above our nature we invariably fall below it.
The teeth!—the teeth!—they were here, and there, and everywhere, and visibly and palpably before me; long, narrow, and excessively white, with the pale lips writhing about them, as in the very moment of their first terrible development.
The ninety and nine are with dreams, content but the hope of the world made new, is the hundredth man who is grimly bent on making those dreams come true.
Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.
Science has not yet taught us if madness is or is not the sublimity of the intelligence.
The death of a beautiful woman, is unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world.
A strong argument for the religion of Christ is this – that offences against Charity are about the only ones which men on their death-beds can be made – not to understand – but to feel – as crime.
The nose of a mob is its imagination. By this, at any time, it can be quietly led.
Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality.
Experience has shown, and a true philosophy will always show, that a vast, perhaps the larger portion of the truth arises from the seemingly irrelevant.
It is the nature of truth in general, as of some ores in particular, to be richest when most superficial.
I have great faith in fools self-confidence my friends call it.
To vilify a great man is the readiest way in which a little man can himself attain greatness.
I have no faith in human perfectability. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active – not more happy – nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago.
I would define, in brief, the poetry of words as the rhythmical creation of Beauty.
They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.
There is something in the unselfish and self-sacrificing love of a brute, which goes directly to the heart of him who has had frequent occasion to test the paltry friendship and gossamer fidelity of mere Man.