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!)
I have great faith in fools – self-confidence my friends will call it.
Experience has shown, and a true philosophy will always show, that a vast, perhaps the larger, portion of truth arises from the seemingly irrelevant.
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?
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.
Every poem should remind the reader that they are going to die.
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.
Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe, and forget this lost Lenore!
The death of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world.
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.
Other friends have flown before -On the morrow he will leave me, as my Hopes have flown before.
Who has not, a hundred times, found himself committing a vile or 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 judgement, to violate that which is Law, merely because we understand it to be such?
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.
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.
If we cannot comprehend God in his visible works, how then in his inconceivable thoughts, that call the works into being?
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 The spirits of the dead who stood In life before thee are again In death around thee—and their will Shall overshadow thee: be still. […]
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.