"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."

"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."

"Science has not yet taught us if madness is or is not the sublimity of the intelligence."

"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 surcease of sorrow - sorrow for the lost Lenore."

"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."

"To vilify a great man is the readiest way in which a little man can himself attain greatness."

"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."

"Mysteries force a man to think, and so injure his health."

"There is an eloquence in true enthusiasm."

"I intend to put up with nothing that I can put."

"Even with the utterly lost, to whom life and death are equally jests, there are matters of which no jest can be made."

"I was never really insane except upon occasions when my heart was touched."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"Men have called me mad; but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence" whether much that is glorious" whether all that is profound" does not spring from disease of thought" from moods of mind exalted at the expense of the general intellect."

"In the strange anomaly of my existence, feelings with me had never been of the heart, and my passions always were of the mind."

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

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

"From childhood's hour I have not been. As others were, I have not seen. As others saw."

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

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

"I am a writer. Therefore. I am not sane."

"I blush, I burn, I shudder, while I pen the damnable atrocity."

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

"It is the nature of truth in general, as of some ores in particular, to be richest when most superficial."

"So resolute is the world to despise anything which carries with it an air of simplicity."

"But, for myself, the Earth's records had taught me to look for widest ruin as the price of highest civilization."

"At midnight, in the month of June, I stand beneath the mystic moon."

"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 a second afterward, (so frail may that web have been) we remember not that we have dreamed."

"Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe, and forget this lost Lenore!"

"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 cold for me-There pass'd, as a shroud,A fleecy cloud,And I turned away to thee,Proud Evening Star,In thy glory afar,And dearer thy beam shall be;For joy to my heartIs the proud partThou bearest in Heaven at night,And more I admireThy distant fire,Than that colder, lowly light."

"Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things that escape those who dream only at night."

"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."

"Stupidity is a talent for misconception."

"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..."

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

"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."

"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."

"You are rich, respected, admired, beloved; you are happy, as once I was."

"The generous Critic fann'd the Poet's fire, And taught the world with reason to admire."

"In efforts to soar above our nature we invariably fall below it."

"The idea of God, infinity, or spirit stands for the possible attempt at an impossible conception."

"There are some secrets which do not permit themselves to be told. Men die nightly in their beds, wringing the hands of ghostly confessors, and looking them piteously in the eyes - die with despair of heart and convulsion of throat, on account of the hideousness of mysteries which will not suffer themselves to be revealed."

"With me poetry has not been a purpose, but a passion."

"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 give direction to the character of Man. Who has not, a hundred times, found himself committing a vile or a silly action, for no other reason than because he knows he should not? Have we not a perpetual inclination, in the teeth of our best judgment, to violate that which is Law, merely because we understand it to be such?"

"And have I not told you that what you mistake for madness is but over-acuteness of the sense?"

"Blood was its Avatar and its seal."

"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."

"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; And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side Of my darling- my darling- my life and my bride, In the sepulchre there by the sea, In her tomb by the sounding sea."