Edgar Allan Poe

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

A million candles have burned themselves out. Still I read on. (Montresor)

I found him well educated, with unusual powers of mind, but infected with misanthropy, and subject to perverse moods of alternate enthusiasm and melancholy.

The realities of the world affected me as visions, and as visions only, while the wild ideas of the land of dreams became, in turn,—not the material of my every-day existence--but in very deed that existence utterly and solely in itself.

I have been happy, though in a dream. I have been happy-and I love the theme: Dreams! in their vivid colouring of life As in that fleeting, shadowy, misty strife

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?

For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams _x000D_ of the beautiful Annabel Lee

Thou wouldst be loved? - then let thy heart_x000D_ _x000D_ From its present pathway part not!_x000D_ _x000D_ Being everything which now thou art,_x000D_ _x000D_ Be nothing which thou art not._x000D_ _x000D_ So with the world thy gentle ways,_x000D_ _x000D_ Thy grace, thy more than beauty,_x000D_ _x000D_ Shall be an endless theme of praise,_x000D_ _x000D_ And love - a simple duty.

To Helen Helen, thy beauty is to me Like those Nicean barks of yore That gently, o'er a perfumed sea, The weary, way-worn wanderer bore To his own native shore. On desperate seas long wont to roam, Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face, Thy Naiad airs have brought me home To the glory that was Greece, And the grandeur that was Rome. Lo, in yon brilliant window-niche How statue-like I see thee stand, The agate lamp within thy hand, Ah! Psyche, from the regions which Are Holy Land!

Of puns it has been said that those who most dislike them are those who are least able to utter them.

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.

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.

We had always dwelled together, beneath a tropical sun, in the Valley of the Many Colored Grass.

Mournful and Never-ending Remembrance.

I was never kinder to the old man than during the whole week before I killed him.

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.

Yet, mad am I not — and very surely do I not dream.

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.

I need scarcely observe that a poem deserves its title only inasmuch as it excites, by elevating the soul. The value of the poem is in the ratio of this elevating excitement.

...And, all at once, the moon arouse through the thin ghastly mist, And was crimson in color... And they lynx which dwelleth forever in the tomb, came out therefrom. And lay down at the feet of the demon. And looked at him steadily in the face.

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.