Edgar Allan Poe

Has two siblings; brother William and sister Rosalie. His parents, David Poe Jr. and Elizabeth Arnold Poe, were touring actors.

Studied in England during the years 1815-1820.

Poe didnt earn a cent from his most famous poem, "The Raven", having published it first in a newspaper for free and thereby losing any and all future copyright monies. The original title of "The Raven" was "To Lenore" but upon having dinner with Charles Dickens and learning of the great writers recently deceased pet bird, which just happened to be a raven, Poe reworked the poem to include the black bird as a central figure. Poe wrote "The Raven" with the intent of creating what he called an "adult fairy tale" and when asked why he didnt start the poem with the traditional "Once upon a time" but used "Once upon a midnight dreary" Poe replied, "In my time its always midnight dreary." All of Poes stories took place at night, or if a day scene was required, it was the bleakest, foulest day of the year.

Born Edgar Poe, raised in Richmond, Virginia, by the Allan family.

Virginia Clemm (b.1822) was his cousin/niece.

Pictured on a 3 US postage stamp in the Famous Americans/Poets series, issued 7 October 1949.

Appears on sleeve of The Beatles "Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band".

Considered by many to have invented the American horror story, science fiction, and the detective story.

The Edgar Awards for mystery literature was named in honor of his writing.

Was a sergeant major at West Point.

Wrote the first modern detective story.

There is some mystery surrounding the actual conditions of his death. In October 1849, he was found lying in a gutter, drunk, barely conscious and wearing someone elses clothing. He died shortly thereafter of apparent alcohol poisoning. However, some historians believe that there may have been other reasons for his untimely demise. The most common theory is that he was a victim of a political kidnapping and made to vote in a local mayoral election while dressed up in different clothes and under the influence of massive amounts of alcohol, so that he would not remember anything. Others believe that he may have had a massive brain tumor that led to a stroke; this theory is aided somewhat by the fact that Poe had a rather large, oddly-shaped head.

Every year on the date of Poes birthday, a mystery man leaves a bottle of cognac and roses on Poes grave in Baltimore, Maryland.

The NFL franchise Baltimore Ravens are named so because of his famous poem, "The Raven". He, of course, was from Baltimore.

In the September 1996 edition of the "Maryland Medical Journal," Physician R. Michael Benitez -- who ran the coronary care unit at the Baltimore V.A. Medical Center and taught at the University of Maryland Medical Center -- published his conclusion that Poe died of rabies contracted via an animal bite, probably from a pet cat. Poes symptoms and death indicate he suffered from rabies, a viral encephalitis that attacks the brain and central nervous system. Rabies -- which is transmitted from the saliva of an infected animal to the open wound of a new host -- is characterized by wide fluctuations in pulse, perspiration, delirium, coma and confusion. A patient typically seems to recover, then suffers a relapse. The clinical course of rabies is four days, after which the patient dies without treatment. These were Poes symptoms, and his case lasted four days before he died. According to Benitez, only twice in recorded history has anyone survived rabies, and "they werent quite the same people they were before" as rabies causes irrevocable brain damage. Poe kept cats, and although there is no record of his ever having been bitten, Benitez noted that only 27 percent of recent rabies victims ever remembered the bite. The incubation period can last up to a year. In Poes time, there was no treatment for rabies, which was invariably fatal. For Poe, it was almost a case of life imitating art, an end as inevitable and as gruesome as the sufferings of his tortured characters.

Poe met Charles Dickens during the Englishmans 1842 tour of America. On March 6, 1842, Poe and Dickens arranged to meet while he was in Philadelphia. Dickens had been greatly impressed by Poes ability to guess the ending of his 1841 serialized novel "Barnaby Rudge". In the "Saturday Evening Post" edition of May 1841, Poe had reviewed the work, which was being published serially in a magazine a chapter at a time. At the meeting, Dickens agreed to consider writing for the magazine that Poe edited, "Grahams", and to try to find an English publisher for Poes "Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque". Nothing of substance came from either promise. Curiously, Dickens owned a pet raven named Grip, and he had introduced the loquacious raven into "Barnaby Rudge" as a character. In his May 1841 review, Poe commented on the use of the talking raven, saying the bird should have loomed larger in the plot. Literary experts surmise that the talking raven of "Barnaby Rudge" inspired Poes most famous poem, "The Raven", published in 1845. After Grip died in 1841, Dickens had the bird mounted. It now resides at the Free Library on Logan Circle in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Many scholars believe that Poe suffered from clinical depression.

Poe desperately wanted to become a Freemason, but the Masons refused to consider him for membership.

When Edgar was two and a half years old, he became-for all intents and purposes-orphaned, as his father had abandoned him and his mother died of tuberculosis. He was then taken in by John Allan and his wife, Frances Keeling nee Valentine (by whom a poem of the name "My Valentine" was later inspired). He later endured when life took his foster parents from him in an insult-to-injury and sort-of deja-vu way. As Elizabeth Poe died of tuberculosis in 1811, Frances Allan died of chronic illnesses in 1829; and as David Poe left Edgar and his two siblings with Elizabeth, John Allan technically abandoned him (and Frances) when he went on multiple sprees of infidelity throughout his marriage-and he estranged himself from him partly because of being held to account for his infidelities. He also left him out of his will, in which he also effectively disavowed two of his out-of-wedlock children (the only two of whom he even acknowledged, albe begrudgingly acknowledged, in any explicit detail)-noting only that he had told his second wife about his affair with their mother before they married in 1830, and that he essentially could not have been happier when the one child died and thus became one less heir. As for John Allans second wife, Louisa Gabriella Patterson, she became a thorn in Edgars side and contributed to the increasing impossibility of any reconciliation of Edgar and John, whom (like Edgars biological father) died of alcoholism. During the last time that Edgar ever saw John, Louisa didnt even try to stop her husband from threatening her step-foster son or otherwise facilitate any olive-branch extension, not even withstanding that her husband had advanced edema that distress from his final meeting with his foster son mustve only exacerbated.

Was expelled from West Point for "gross neglect of duty".

In Young Sherlock Holmes , the teenage Holmes and Watson were fans of Poes writing.

In the remake of "Ladykillers", the chief villain was a fan of Poe.

In a strange turn of events, his first post-mortem biography was written and told by his greatest literary enemy, Rufus Wilmot Griswold, who often invented details of Poes life in order to libel him (as for example his supposed alcoholism, since then Poe had congenital intolerance to it and he was unable to drink alcohol), caused among other reasons by their rivalry for the love of writer Frances Sargent Osgood. It turned into one of the most important cases of defamation in the entire 19th century.

In his last years he was member of the Sons of Temperance, a society found in 1842 and created against the consumption of alcoholic beverages.

Member, Jefferson Literary and Debating Society, The University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia (established in 1825 by sixteen disgruntled members of the now-defunct Patrick Henry Society). Fellow members include President Woodrow Wilson, President James Madison (Honorary), The Marquis de Lafayette (Honorary), William Faulkner (Honorary) and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher (Honorary).

There lives no man who at some period has not been tormented by an,earnest desire to tantalize a listener by circumlocution.

The ingenious are always fanciful, and the truly imaginative never,otherwise than analytic.

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.

Never to suffer would have been never to have been blessed.

The question has not been settled whether madness is a higher form of,intelligence.

I became insane, with terrible stretches of sanity.

Believe nothing of what you hear and even less of what you see.

Years of love have been forgot in the hatred of a minute.

We loved with a love that was more than love.

It was many and many a year ago,In a kingdom by the sea,That a maiden there lived whom you may knowBy the name of ANNABEL LEE;And this maiden she lived with no other thoughtThan to love and be loved by me. 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 heavenCoveted her and me. And this was the reason that, long ago,In this kingdom by the sea,A wind blew out of a cloud, chillingMy beautiful Annabel Lee;So that her highborn kinsman cameAnd bore her away from me,To shut her up in a sepulchreIn this kingdom by the sea. The angels, not half so happy in heaven,Went envying her and me-Yes!- that was the reason (as all men know,In this kingdom by the sea)That the wind came out of the cloud by night,Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee. But our love it was stronger by far than the loveOf those who were older than we-Of many far wiser than we-And neither the angels in heaven above,Nor the demons down under the sea,Can ever dissever my soul from the soulOf the beautiful Annabel Lee. For the moon never beams without bringing me dreamsOf the beautiful Annabel Lee;And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyesOf the beautiful Annabel Lee;And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the sideOf my darling- my darling- my life and my bride,In the sepulchre there by the sea,In her tomb by the sounding sea.

The best things in life make you sweaty.

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.

Invisible things are the only realities.

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

Philosophers have often held disputeAs to the seat of thought in man and bruteFor that the power of thought attends the latterMy friend, thy beau, hath made a settled matter,And spite of dogmas current in all ages,One settled fact is better than ten sages. (O,Tempora! O,Mores!),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.

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.

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 have been upon the verge of the great secret. In snatches, they learn something of the wisdom which is of good, and more of the mere knowledge which is of evil.

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.

I Hear the sledges with the bells - Silver bells! What a world of merriment their melody foretells! How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle, In the icy air of night! While the stars that oversprinkle All the heavens, seem to twinkle With a crystalline delight; Keeping time, time, time, In a sort of Runic rhyme, To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells From the bells, bells, bells, bells, Bells, bells, bells - From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells. II Hear the mellow wedding bells - Golden bells! What a world of happiness their harmony foretells! Through the balmy air of night How they ring out their delight! - From the molten - golden notes, And all in tune, What a liquid ditty floats To the turtle - dove that listens, while she gloats On the moon! Oh, from out the sounding cells, What a gush of euphony voluminously wells! How it swells! How it dwells On the Future! - how it tells Of the rapture that impels To the swinging and the ringing Of the bells, bells, bells - Of the bells, bells, bells, bells, Bells, bells, bells - To the rhyming and the chiming of the bells! III Hear the loud alarum bells - Brazen bells! What a tale of terror, now, their turbulency tells! In the startled ear of night How they scream out their affright! Too much horrified to speak, They can only shriek, shriek, Out of tune, In a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the fire, In a mad expostulation with the deaf and frantic fire, Leaping higher, higher, higher, With a desperate desire, And a resolute endeavor Now - now to sit, or never, By the side of the pale - faced moon. Oh, the bells, bells, bells! What a tale their terror tells Of Despair! How they clang, and clash and roar! What a horror they outpour On the bosom of the palpitating air! Yet the ear, it fully knows, By the twanging, And the clanging, How the danger ebbs and flows; Yet the ear distinctly tells, In the jangling, And the wrangling, How the danger sinks and swells, By the sinking or the swelling in the anger of the bells - Of the bells - Of the bells, bells, bells, bells, Bells, bells, bells - In the clamor and the clanging of the bells! IV Hear the tolling of the bells - Iron bells! What a world of solemn thought their monody compels! In the silence of the night, How we shiver with affright At the melancholy menace of their tone! For every sound that floats From the rust within their throats Is a groan. And the people - ah, the people - They that dwell up in the steeple, All alone, And who, tolling, tolling, tolling, In that muffled monotone, Feel a glory in so rolling On the human heart a stone - They are neither man nor woman - They are neither brute nor human - They are Ghouls: - And their king it is who tolls: - And he rolls, rolls, rolls, Rolls A paean from the bells! And his merry bosom swells With the paean of the bells! And he dances, and he yells; Keeping time, time, time, In a sort of Runic rhyme, To the paean of the bells: - Of the bells: Keeping time, time, time In a sort of Runic rhyme, To the throbbing of the bells - Of the bells, bells, bells: - To the sobbing of the bells: - Keeping time, time, time, As he knells, knells, knells, In a happy Runic rhyme, To the rolling of the bells - Of the bells, bells, bells - To the tolling of the bells - Of the bells, bells, bells, bells, Bells, bells, bells, - To the moaning and the groaning of the bells.

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.

Even in the grave, all is not lost.

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.

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; 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.

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.

To elevate the soul, poetry is necessary.

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore — While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.

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 none,? that we see or seemIs but a dream within a dream.

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,It was many and many a year ago,In a kingdom by the sea,That a maiden there lived whom you may knowBy the name of ANNABEL LEE;And this maiden she lived with no other thoughtThan to love and be loved by me. 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 heavenCoveted her and me. And this was the reason that, long ago,In this kingdom by the sea,A wind blew out of a cloud, chillingMy beautiful Annabel Lee;So that her highborn kinsman cameAnd bore her away from me,To shut her up in a sepulchreIn this kingdom by the sea. The angels, not half so happy in heaven,Went envying her and me-Yes!- that was the reason (as all men know,In this kingdom by the sea)That the wind came out of the cloud by night,Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee. But our love it was stronger by far than the loveOf those who were older than we-Of many far wiser than we-And neither the angels in heaven above,Nor the demons down under the sea,Can ever dissever my soul from the soulOf the beautiful Annabel Lee. For the moon never beams without bringing me dreamsOf the beautiful Annabel Lee;And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyesOf the beautiful Annabel Lee;And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the sideOf my darling- my darling- my life and my bride,In the sepulchre there by the sea,In her tomb by the sounding sea. " "It was many and many a year ago,In a kingdom by the sea,That a maiden there lived whom you may knowBy the name of ANNABEL LEE;And this maiden she lived with no other thoughtThan to love and be loved by me. 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 heavenCoveted her and me. And this was the reason that, long ago,In this kingdom by the sea,A wind blew out of a cloud, chillingMy beautiful Annabel Lee;So that her highborn kinsman cameAnd bore her away from me,To shut her up in a sepulchreIn this kingdom by the sea. The angels, not half so happy in heaven,Went envying her and me-Yes!- that was the reason (as all men know,In this kingdom by the sea)That the wind came out of the cloud by night,Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee. But our love it was stronger by far than the loveOf those who were older than we-Of many far wiser than we-And neither the angels in heaven above,Nor the demons down under the sea,Can ever dissever my soul from the soulOf the beautiful Annabel Lee. For the moon never beams without bringing me dreamsOf the beautiful Annabel Lee;And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyesOf the beautiful Annabel Lee;And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the sideOf my darling- my darling- my life and my bride,In the sepulchre there by the sea,In her tomb by the sounding sea.

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.

A skillful literary artist has constructed a tale. If wise, he has not fashioned his thoughts to accommodate his incidents; but having conceived, with deliberate care, a certain unique or single effect to be wrought out, he then invents as may best aid him in establishing this preconceived effect. If his very initial sentence tend not to the outbringing of this effect, then he has failed in his first step. In the whole composition there should be no words written, of which the tendency, direct or indirect, is not to the one pre-established design. And by such means, with such care and skill, a picture is at length painted which leaves in the mind of him who contemplates it with a kindred art, a sense of the fullest satisfaction. The idea of the tale has been presented unblemished because undisturbed: and this is an end unattainable by the novel. Undue brevity is just as exceptionable here as in the poem; but undue length is yet more to be avoided.

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.

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.

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.

If Pierre Bon-Bon had his failings--and what great man has not a thousand?--if Pierre Bon-Bon, I say, had his failings, they were failings of very little importance--faults indeed which, in other tempers, have often been looked upon rather in the light of virtues.

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

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.

And thus when by Poetry, or when by Music, the most entrancing of the poetic moods, we find ourselves melted into tears, we weep then, not. . . through excess of pleasure, but through a certain petulant, impatient sorrow at our inability to grasp now, wholly, here on earth, at once and forever, those divine and raptorous joys of which through the poem, or through the music, we attain to but brief and indeterminate glimpses.

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

Men have called me mad; but the question is not 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. They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who only dream by night. In their gray visions they obtain glimpses of eternity, and thrill, in waking, to find that they have been upon the verge of the great secret. In snatches, they learn something of the wisdom which is of good, and more of the mere knowledge which is of evil. They penetrate, however rudderless or compassless, into the vast ocean of the ‘light ineffable’.

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 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 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. They 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 have been upon the verge of the great secret. In snatches, they learn something of the wisdom which is of good, and more of the mere knowledge which is of evil. They penetrate, however, rudderless or compassless into the vast ocean of the "light ineffable", and again, like the adventures of the Nubian geographer, "agressi sunt mare tenebrarum, quid in eo esset exploraturi". We will say then, that I am mad.

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 been the desperate attempt to escape from torturing memories, from a sense of insupportable loneliness and a dread of some strange impending doom.

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.

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?,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 that nervous intensity of interest with which, in my case, the powers of meditation (not to speak technically) busied and buried themselves, in the contemplation of even the most ordinary objects of the universe.

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

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.

Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censerSwung by Seraphim whose footfalls tinkled on the tufted floor. "Wretch," I cried, "thy God hath lent thee--by these angels he hath sent thee--Respite--respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore!Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe, and forget this lost Lenore!"Quothe the Raven, "Nevermore.

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.

Misery is manifold. The wretchedness of earth is multiform. Overreaching the wide horizon as the rainbow, its hues are as various as the hues of that arch, --as distinct too, yet as intimately blended. Overreaching the wide horizon as the rainbow! 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. Either the memory of past bliss is the anguish of to-day, or the agonies which are have their origin in the ecstasies which might have been.

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.

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.

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. . .

And thus, as a closer and still closer intimacy admitted me more unreservedly into recesses if his spirit, the more bitterly did I perceive the futility of all attempt at cheering a mind from which darkness, as if an inherent positive quality, poured forth upon all objects of the moral and physical universe in one unceasing radiation of gloom.

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.

This apartment, which you no doubt profanely suppose to be the shop of Will Wimble the undertaker --a man whom we know not, and whose plebeian appellation has never before this night thwarted our royal ears --this apartment, I say, is the Dais-Chamber of our Palace, devoted to the councils of our kingdom, and to other sacred and lofty purposes.

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.

Be nothing which thou art not,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 principle of vis inertiae (. . . ) seems to be identical in physics and metaphysics. It is not more true in the former, that a large body is with more difficulty set in motion than a smaller one, and that its subsequent momentum is commensurate with this difficulty, than it is, in the latter, that intellects of the vaster capacity, while more forcible, more constant, and more eventful in their movements than those of inferior grade, are yet the less readily moved, and more embarrassed, and full of hesitation in the first few steps of their progress,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 of interest and he who attempts it for the first time is astonished by the apparently illimitable distance and incoherence between the starting-point and the goal.

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 research are indebted for the most glorious of illustration.

From the dim regions beyond the mountains at the upper end of our encircled domain, there crept out a narrow and deep river, brighter than all save the eyes of Eleonora; and, winding stealthily about in mazy courses, it passed away, at length, through a shadowy gorge, among hills still dimmer than those whence it had issued. We called it the "River of Silence"; for there seemed to be a hushing influence in its flow. No murmur arose from its bed, and so gently it wandered along, that the pearly pebbles upon which we loved to gaze, far down within its bosom, stirred not at all, but lay in a motionless content, each in its own old station, shining on gloriously forever.

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.

Never to suffer would never to have been blessed.

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,Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore.

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.

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.

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 time advances? I am drinking ale today.

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.

The glory that was Greece.

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.

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 grandeur that was Rome.

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.

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.

I wish I could write as mysterious as a cat.

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. .