Edgar Allan Poe

“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”

“Man's real life is happy, chiefly because he is ever expecting that it soon will be so.”

“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.”

“Les quatre conditions élémentaires du bonheur sont : la vie en plein air, l'amour d'une femme, le détachement de toute ambition et la création d'un Beau nouveau.”

“Son front, quoique peu ridé, semble porter le sceau d'une myriade d'années. Ses cheveux gris sont des archives du passé et ses yeux, plus gris encore, sont des sibylles de l'avenir.”

“Un esprit tourné à la folie pouvait bien se laisser entraîner par de pareilles suggestions, surtout quand elles s'accordaient avec ses idées favorites préconçues”

“Jetez sur une étoile un rapide coup d'œil, regardez-la obliquement, en tournant vers elle la partie latérale de la rétine (beaucoup plus sensible à une lumière faible que la partie centrale), et vous verrez l'étoile plus distinctement; vous aurez l'appréciation la plus juste de son éclat, éclat qui s'obscurcit à proportion que vous dirigez votre vue en plein sur elle. Dans le dernier cas, il tombe sur l'œil un plus grand nombre de rayons; mais dans le premier, il y a une réceptibilité plus complète, une susceptibilité beaucoup plus vive. Une profondeur outrée affaiblit la pensée et la rend perplexe; et il est possible de faire disparaître Vénus elle-même du firmament par une attention trop soutenue, trop concentrée, trop directe.”

“In visions of the dark night I have dreamed of joy departed-- But a waking dream of life and light Hath left mebroken-hearted.”

“And if I died, at least I diedFor thee! for thee”

“Yes, Heaven is thine; but thisIs a world of sweets and sours;Our flowers are merely - flowers,And the shadow of thy perfect blissIs the sunshine of ours.”

“It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain; but once conceived, it haunted me day and night. Object there was none. Passion there was none. I loved the old man. He had never wronged me. He had never given me insult. For his gold I had no desire. I think it was his eye! yes, it was this! He had the eye of a vulture –a pale blue eye, with a film over it. Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold; and so by degrees – very gradually –I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye forever.”

“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.”

“There seemed a deep sense of life and joy about all; and although no airs blew from out the Heavens, yet everything had motion through the gentle sweepings to and fro of innumberable butterflies, that might have been mistaken for tullips with wings.”

“It is a happiness to wonder; -- it is a happiness to dream.”

“And haven't I told you that what you mistake for madness is but over-acuteness of the senses.”

“A judge at common law may be an ordinary man; a good judge of a carpet must be a genius.”

“Such, I have long known, is the paradoxical law of all sentiments having terror as a basis.”

“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”

“I have not always been as now:The fever'd diadem on my brow I claim'd and won unsurprisingly-Hath not the same fierce heirdom given Rome to the Caeser-this is me? The heritage of a kindly mind,And a proud spirit which hath striven Triumphantly with human kind.”

“I Dwelt aloneIn a world of moan,And my soul was a stagnant tide,Till the fair and gentle Eulalie became my blushing bride-Till the yellow-haired young Eulalie became my smiling bride Ah, less-less bright The stars of nightThan the eyes of the radiant girl! And never a flake That the vapor can make With the moon-tints of purple and pearl,Can vie with the modest Eulalie's most unregarded curl-Can vie compare with the bright-eyed Eulalie's most humble and careless curl Now Doubt-now Pain Come never again, For her soul gives me sigh for sigh, And all day long Shine, bright and strong, Astarte within the sky, While ever to her dear Eulalie upturns her matron eye- While ever to her young Eulalie upturns her violet eye.”

“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.”

“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 so, all the night-tide, I lay down the side, of my darling, my darling, my life and my bride, in the sepulchre there by the sea, in her tomb by the surrounding sea.”

“Contemplavo il luogo: quella casa, il nudo disegno del paesaggio, le mura spoglie, le aggrovigliate carici, i radi, decidui tronchi; e pativo uno sfinimento dell’anima, che non posso paragonare a nessuna sensazione terrestre, se non al ridestarsi dell’oppiomane dal fasto dei suoi sogni: il tristo precipizio nella vita quotidiana, l’orrore del velo che cade. Era gelido il cuore, affranto, infermo; tetra, sconsolata meditazione, che nessuna sevizia dell’immaginazione poteva adizzare al sentimento del sublime.”

“And then there stole into my fancy, like a rich musical note, the thought of what sweet rest there must be in the grave.”

“With me poetry has been not a purpose, but a passion; and the passions should be held in reverence: they must not — they cannot at will be excited, with an eye to the paltry compensations, or the more paltry commendations, of mankind.”

“I was forced to fall back upon the unsatisfactory conclusion, that while, beyond doubt, there are combinations of very simple natural objects which have the power of thus affecting us, still the analysis of this power lies among considerations beyond our depth. It was possible, I reflected, that a mere different arrangement of the particulars of the scene, of the details of the picture, would be sufficient to modify, or perhaps to annihilate its capacity for sorrowful impression.”

“In the deepest slumber-no! In delirium-no! In a swoon-no! In death-no! even in the grave all is not lost.”

“...something which, for want of a more definite term at present, I must be permitted to be called queer; but which Mr. Coleridge would have called mystical, Mr. Kant pantheistical, Mr. Carlyle twistical, and Mr. Emerson hyperquizzitistical.”

“Books, indeed, were his sole luxuries”

“But Psyche uplifting her finger said: Sadly this star I mistrust”

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

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

“As a poet and as a mathematician, he would reason well; as a mere mathematician, he could not have reasoned at all.”

“I was deeply interested in the little family history which he detailed to me with all that candor which a Frenchman indulges whenever mere self is the theme.”

“To him, who still would gaze upon the glory of the summer sun, there comes, when that sun will from him part, a sullen hopelessness of heart.”

“Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best have gone to their eternal rest.”

“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 heaven Coveted her and me.”

“And all my days are trances,And all my nightly dreamsAre where thy dark eye glances,And where thy footstep gleams--In what ethereal dances,By what eternal streams!”

“On the morrow he will leave me as my hopes have flown before.”

“And because our reason violently deters us from the brink, therefore, do we the more impetuously approach it. There is no passion in nature so demoniacally impatient, as that of him, who shuddering upon the edge of a precipice, thus meditates a plunge. To indulge for a moment, in any attempt at thought, is to be inevitably lost; for reflection but urges us to forbear, and therefore it is, I say, that we cannot. If there be no friendly arm to check us, or if we fail in a sudden effort to prostrate ourselves backward from the abyss, we plunge, and are destroyed.”

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

“And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtainThrilled me — filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating,Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door —Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door; —This it is, and nothing more.”

“But evil things, in robes of sorrow, Assailed the monarch's high estate;(Ah, let us mourn, for never morrowShall dawn upon him desolate!)And round about his home the gloryThat blushed and bloomed,Is but a dim-remembered storyOf the old time entombed.”

“Yet we met; and fate bound us together at the alter,and I never spoke of passion nor thought of love. She, however shunned society, and, attaching herself to me alone rendered me happy. It is a happiness to wonder; it is a happiness to dream.”

“...the agony of my soul found vent in one loud, long and final scream of despair.”

“Aquellos que sueñan de día comprenden muchas cosas que escapan a los que sueñan solo de noche”

“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.”

“Yes I now feel that it was then on that evening of sweet dreams- that the very first dawn of human love burst upon the icy night of my spirit. Since that period I have never seen nor heard your name without a shiver half of delight half of anxiety.”

“qui n'a plus qu'un moment a vivreN'a plus a dissimuler”