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?

Blood was its Avatar and its seal.

It is more than probable that I am not understood; but I fear, indeed, that it is in no manner possible to convey to the mind of the merely general reader, an adequate idea of...

The LakeIn spring of youth it was my lotTo haunt of the wide world a spotThe which I could not love the less-So lovely was the lonelinessOf a wild lake, with black rock bound,And the...

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.

Mournful and Never-ending Remembrance.

The nose of a mob is its imagination. By this, at any time, it can be quietly led.

Sleep, those little slices of death — how I loathe them.

As a poet and as a mathematician, he would reason well; as a mere mathematician, he could not have reasoned at all.

I have before suggested that a genuine blackguard is never without a pocket-handkerchief.

Ceux qui revent eveilles ont conscience de 1000 choses qui echapent a ceux qui ne revent qu’endormis.The one who has day dream are aware of 1000 things that the one who dreams only when he...

The Tell Tale Poe

The goodness of the true pun is in direct ratio to its intolerability

You call it hope — that fire of fire!It is but agony of desire.

I have absolutely no pleasure in the stimulants in which I sometimes so madly indulge. It has not been in the pursuit of pleasure that I have periled life and reputation and reason. It has...

There are few persons who have not, at some period of their lives, amused themselves in retracing the steps by which particular conclusions of their own minds have been attained. The occupation is often full...

I felt that I breathed an atmosphere of sorrow.

…And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor shall be lifted–nevermore!

I was never really insane, except on occasions where my heart was touched.

Experience has shown, and a true philosophy will always show, that a vast, perhaps the larger, portion of truth arises from the seemingly irrelevant.

I would define, in brief, the poetry of words as the rhythmical creation of beauty.

I AM come of a race noted for vigor of fancy and ardor of passion. Men have called me mad; but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest...

For eyes we have no models in the remotely antique.

Yes, I now feel that it was then on that evening of sweet dreams- that the very first dawn of human love burst upon the icy night of my spirit. Since that period I have...

Thank Heaven! The crisis /The danger is past, and the lingering illness, is over at last /, and the fever called ”Living” is conquered at last.

I am above the weakness of seeking to establish a sequence of cause and effect, between the disaster and the atrocity.

The death of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world.

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.

Believe only half of what you see and nothing that you hear.

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...

[Soon] Gothic … hidden vices and perversions behind the veneer of virtue.

A valet, of stealthy step, thence conducted me, in silence, through many dark and intricate passages in my progress to the studio of his master.

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...

All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.

Coincidences, in general, are great stumbling-blocks in the way of that class of thinkers who have been educated to know nothing of the theory of probabilities—that theory to which the most glorious objects of human...

When I was young and filled with folly, I fell in love with melancholy

Filled with mingled cream and amber I will drain that glass again. Such hilarious visions clamber Through the chambers of my brain — Quaintest thoughts — queerest fancies Come to life and fade away; Who...

I have great faith in fools – my friends call it self-confidence

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.

EldoradoGaily bedight, A gallant knight, In sunshine and in shadow, Had journeyed long, Singing a song, In search of Eldorado. But he grew old— This knight so bold— And o’er his heart a shadow— Fell...

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.

Son front, quoique peu ridé, semble porter le sceau d’une myriade d’années. Ses cheveux gris sont des archives du passé et ses yeux, plus gris encore, sont des sibylles de l’avenir.

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.

If any ambitious man have a fancy to revolutionize, at one effort, the universal world of human thought, human opinion, and human sentiment, the opportunity is his own — the road to immortal renown lies...

Even in the grave, all is not lost.

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.Eagerly I wished the morrow; — vainly I had sought to borrow From my books...

There are moments when even to the sober eye of reason, the world of our sad humanity may assume the semblance of Hell.

Lo! ’tis a gala nightWithin the lonesome latter years! An angel throng, bewinged, bedightIn veils, and drowned in tears,Sit in a theatre, to seeA play of hopes and fears […]

Were I called on to define, very briefly, the term Art, I should call it ”the reproduction of what the Senses perceive in Nature through the veil of the soul.” The mere imitation, however accurate,...

After reading all that has been written, and after thinking all that can be thought, on the topics of God and the soul, the man who has a right to say that he thinks at...