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

Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality.

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

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

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

I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.

All religion, my friend, is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination, and poetry.

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

I wish I could write as mysterious as a cat.

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?

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

The most natural, and, consequently, the truest and most intense of the human affections are those which arise in the heart as if by electric sympathy.

Decorum — that bug-bear which deters so many from bliss until the opportunity for bliss has forever gone by.

The customs of the world are so many conventional follies.

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.

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.

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.

Love like mine can never be gotten over.

Melancholy is … the most legitimate of all the poetical tones.

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

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

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.

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.

Convinced myself, I seek not to convince.

By the dim light of an accidental lamp, tall, antique, worm-eaten, wooden tenements were seen tottering to their fall, in directions so many and capricious, that scarce the semblance of a passage was discernible between them.

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 have their origin in the ecstasies which might have been.

It was night, and the rain fell; and falling, it was rain, but, having fallen, it was blood.

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.

A sombre yet beautiful and peaceful gloom here pervaded all things … the shade of the trees fell heavily upon the water, and seemed to bury itself therein, impregnating the depths of the element with darkness.

A novelist, for example, need have no care of his moral. It is there — that is to say, it is somewhere — and the moral and the critics can take care of themselves. When the proper time arrives, all that the gentleman intended, and all that he did not intend, will be brought to light, in the “Dial,” or the “Down-Easter,” together with all that he ought to have intended, and the rest that he clearly meant to intend: — so that it will all come very straight in the end.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Whether people grow fat by joking, or whether there is something in fat itself which predisposes to a joke, I have never been quite able to determine…

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

There are certain themes of which the interest is all-absorbing, but which are too entirely horrible for the purposes of legitimate fiction.

The object, Truth, or the satisfaction of the intellect, and the object, Passion, or the excitement of the heart, are, although attainable, to a certain extent, in poetry, far more readily attainable in prose.

There are chords in the hearts of the most reckless which cannot be touched without emotion. Even with the utterly lost, to whom life and death are equally jests, there are matters of which no jest can be made.

When it most closely allies itself to Beauty: the death, then, of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world — and equally is it beyond doubt that the lips best suited for such topic are those of a bereaved lover.

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.

There are two bodies — the rudimental and the complete ; corresponding with the two conditions of the worm and the butterfly. What we call “death,” is but the painful metamorphosis. Our present incarnation is progressive, preparatory, temporary. Our future is perfected, ultimate, immortal. The ultimate life is the full design.

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

No pictorial or sculptural combinations of points of human loveliness, do more than approach the living and breathing human beauty as it gladdens our daily path.

I grew, day by day, more moody, more irritable, more regardless of the feelings of others. I suffered myself to use intemperate language to my wife. At length, I even offered her personal violence.

There are moments when, even to the sober eye of Reason, the world of our sad Humanity may assume the semblance of a Hell — but the imagination of man is no Carathis, to explore with impunity its every cavern. Alas! the grim legion of sepulchral terrors cannot be regarded as altogether fanciful — but, like the Demons in whose company Afrasiab made his voyage down the Oxus, they must sleep, or they will devour us — they must be suffered to slumber, or we perish.

And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming,
And the lamp-light o’er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted—nevermore!

From childhood’s hour I have not been
As others were—I have not seen
As others saw—I could not bring
My passions from a common spring—
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow—I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone—
And all I lov’d—I lov’d alone—