“The most expuisite beauty has strangeness in its proportions..." Ligeia”

“There is no exquisite beauty… without some strangeness in the proportion.”

“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.”

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

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

“To look at a star by glances - to view it in a side-long way, by turning toward it the exterior portions of the retina (more susceptible of feeble impressions of light than the interior), is to behold the star distinctly - is to have the best appreciation of its lustre - a lustre which grows dim just in proportion as we turn our vision fully upon it.”

“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.”