I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.
All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.
We loved with a love that was more than love.
Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.
I have great faith in fools - self-confidence my friends will call it.
I was never really insane except upon occasions when my heart was touched.
There is no exquisite beauty… without some strangeness in the proportion.
Believe only half of what you see and nothing that you hear.
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.
Sleep, those little slices of death — how I loathe them.
Years of love have been forgot, In the hatred of a minute.
Never to suffer would never to have been blessed.
Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality.
All religion, my friend, is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination, and poetry.
If you wish to forget anything on the spot, make a note that this thing is to be remembered.
The best things in life make you sweaty.
I wish I could write as mysterious as a cat.
Deep in earth my love is lying And I must weep alone.
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 felt that I breathed an atmosphere of sorrow.
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.
And so being young and dipped in folly I fell in love with melancholy.
Beauty of whatever kind, in its supreme development, invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears.
Invisible things are the only realities.
Science has not yet taught us if madness is or is not the sublimity of the intelligence.
The true genius shudders at incompleteness — imperfection — and usually prefers silence to saying the something which is not everything that should be said.
And all I loved, I loved alone.
The death of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world.
Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.
With me poetry has not been a purpose, but a passion.
There are some secrets which do not permit themselves to be told.
I remained too much inside my head and ended up losing my mind
I dread the events of the future, not in themselves but in their results.
Poetry is the rhythmical creation of beauty in words.
That which you mistake for madness is but an overacuteness of the senses.
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...
To elevate the soul, poetry is necessary.
I intend to put up with nothing that I can put down." [Letter to J. Beauchamp Jones, August 8, 1839]
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?
There are chords in the hearts of the most reckless which cannot be touched without emotion.
Every moment of the night Forever changing places And they put out the star-light With the breath from their pale faces
Yet mad I am not...and very surely do I not dream.
Even in the grave, all is not lost.
It is a happiness to wonder; -- it is a happiness to dream.
Convinced myself, I seek not to convince.
Men have called me mad; but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence.
Stupidity is a talent for misconception.
And I fell violently on my face.
To die laughing must be the most glorious of all glorious deaths!
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.
A short story must have a single mood and every sentence must build towards it.
And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.
Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore...
Is all that we see or seem But a dream within a dream?
Every poem should remind the reader that they are going to die.
Leave my loneliness unbroken
Experience has shown, and a true philosophy will always show, that a vast, perhaps the larger, portion of truth arises from the seemingly irrelevant.
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.
Mysteries force a man to think, and so injure his health.
Villains!' I shrieked. 'Dissemble no more! I admit the deed! Tear up the planks! Here, here! It is the beating of his hideous heart!
In criticism, I will be bold, and as sternly, absolutely just with friend and foe. From this purpose nothing shall turn me.
Even with the utterly lost, to whom life and death are equally jests, there are matters of which no jest can be made.
Art is to look at not to criticize.
A man's grammar, like Caesar's wife, should not only be pure, but above suspicion of impurity.
The rain came down upon my head - Unshelter'd. And the wind rendered me mad and deaf and blind.
We gave the Future to the winds, and slumbered tranquilly in the Present, weaving the dull world around us into dreams.
The idea of God, infinity, or spirit stands for the possible attempt at an impossible conception.
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 fitful strain of melancholy which will ever be found inseperable from the perfection of the beautiful.
Blood was its Avatar and its seal.
Either the memory of past bliss is the anguish of to-day; or the agonies which are have their origins in ecstasies which might have been.
When a madman appears thoroughly sane, indeed, it is high time to put him in a straight jacket.
There is an eloquence in true enthusiasm
Lord help my poor soul.
For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams Of the beautiful Annabel Lee; And the stars never rise but i feel the bright eyes Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.
Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best have gone to their eternal rest.
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; With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven Coveted her and me.
In one case out of a hundred a point is excessively discussed because it is obscure; in the ninety-nine remaining it is obscure because it is excessively discussed.
All that we see and seem is but a dream within a dream.
I would define, in brief, the poetry of words as the rhythmical creation of beauty.
From childhood's hour I have not been As others were - I have not seen As others saw - I could not bring My passions from a common spring -
And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door, That I scarce was sure I heard you"— here I opened wide the door; — Darkness there, and nothing more.
That is another of your odd notions," said the Prefect, who had a fashion of calling every thing "odd" that was beyond his comprehension, and thus lived amid an absolute legion of "oddities.
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor, Shall be lifted -- Nevermore!
I was never kinder to the old man than during the whole week before I killed him.
Imperceptibly the love of these discords grew upon me as my love of music grew stronger.
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A million candles have burned themselves out. Still I read on. (Montresor)
True! - nervous - very, very nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad?
...the agony of my soul found vent in one loud, long and final scream of despair.
You call it hope — that fire of fire! It is but agony of desire.
A dirge for her the doubly dead in that she died so young.
Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practise to deceive
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.
I stand amid the roar Of a surf-tormented shore, And I hold within my hand Grains of golden sand- How few! yet how they creep Through my fingers to the deep, While I weep- while I weep!
The depth lies in the valleys where we seek her, and not upon the mountain-tops where she is found.
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
I call to mind flatness and dampness; and then all is madness - the madness of a memory which busies itself among forbidden things.
There was much of the beautiful, much of the wanton, much of the bizarre, something of the terrible, and not a little of that which might have excited disgust.
There are chords in the hearts of the most reckless which cannot be touched without emotion, even by the utterly lost, to whom life and death are equally jests, there are matters of which no jest can be made.
