The plots of God are perfect. The Universe is a plot of God.

Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night. In their gray visions they obtain glimpses of eternity, and thrill, in waking, to find that they...

I saw thee once – only once – years ago:I must not say how many – but not many.It was a July midnight; and from outA full-orbed moon, that, like thine own soul, soaring,Sought a...

The eye, like a shattered mirror, multiplies the images of sorrow.

Deep in earth my love is lyingAnd I must weep alone.

I have great faith in fools; My friends call it self-confidence.

They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.

Lord help my poor soul.

There is no exquisite beauty… without some strangeness in the proportion.

The best chess-player in Christendom may be little more than the best player of chess; but proficiency in whist implies capacity for success in all those more important undertakings where mind struggles with mind.

O, Times! O, Manners! It is my opinionThat you are changing sadly your dominion I mean the reign of manners hath long ceased,For men have none at all, or bad at least;And as for times,...

The writer who neglects punctuation, or mispunctuates, is liable to be misunderstood for the want of merely a comma, it often occurs that an axiom appears a paradox, or that a sarcasm is converted into...

I never can hear a crowd of people singing and gesticulating, all together, at an Italian opera, without fancying myself at Athens, listening to that particular tragedy, by Sophocles, in which he introduces a full...

And all I loved, I loved alone.

Poetry is the rhythmical creation of beauty in words.

I intend to put up with nothing that I can put down.”[Letter to J. Beauchamp Jones, August 8, 1839]

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...

Fill with mingled cream and amber, I will drain that glass again.Such hilarious visions clamber Through the chamber of my brain —Quaintest thoughts — queerest fancies Come to life and fade away;What care I how...

years of love have been forgot, in the hatred of a minute.

I am ugly.

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...

I have no words — alas! — to tellThe loveliness of loving well!

That single thought is enough. The impulse increases to a wish, the wish to a desire, the desire to an uncontrollable longing, and the longing (to the deep regret and mortification of the speaker, and...

But as in ethics, evil is a consequence of good, so in fact, out of joy is sorrow born. Either the memory of past bliss is the anguish of today, or the agonies which are...

There are few cases in which mere popularity should be considered a proper test of merit; but the case of song-writing is, I think, one of the few.

Man’s real life is happy, chiefly because he is ever expecting that it soon will be so.

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...

Beauty of whatever kind, in its supreme development, invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears.

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.

He knew that Hop-Frog was not fond of wine; for it excited the poor cripple almost to madness; and madness is no comfortable feeling.

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 an eloquence in true enthusiasm.

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

To elevate the soul, poetry is necessary.

Yet I am not more sure that my soul lives, than I am that perverseness is one of the primitive impulses of the human heart – one of the indivisible primary faculties, or sentiments, which...

In pace requiescat!

It is evident that we are hurrying onward to some exciting knowledge—some never-to-be-imparted secret, whose attainment is destruction.

It will be found, in fact, that the ingenious are always fanciful, and the truly imaginative never otherwise than analytic.

As an individual, I myself feel impelled to fancy a limitless succession of Universes. Each exists, apart and independently, in the bosom of its proper and particular God.

It is a happiness to wonder; — it is a happiness to dream.

Twas noontide of summer,And mid-time of night;And stars, in their orbits,Shone pale, thro’ the lightOf the brighter, cold moon,’Mid planets her slaves,Herself in the Heavens,Her beam on the waves.I gazed awhileOn her cold smile;Too cold–too...

In death – no! even in the grave all is not lost. Else there is no immortality for man. Arousing from the most profound slumbers, we break the gossamer web of some dream. Yet in...

Jetez sur une étoile un rapide coup d’œil, regardez-la obliquement, en tournant vers elle la partie latérale de la rétine (beaucoup plus sensible à une lumière faible que la partie centrale), et vous verrez l’étoile...

the play was the tragedy “man” and it’s hero the conqueror worm

That man is not truly brave who is afraid either to seem or to be, when it suits him, a coward.

Thy soul shall find itself alone ’Mid dark thoughts of the gray tombstone—Not one, of all the crowd, to pry Into thine hour of secrecy. Be silent in that solitude, Which is not loneliness—for then...

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...

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...

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…

The rudiment of verse may, possibly, be found in the spondee.