“The true genius shudders at incompleteness — imperfection — and usually prefers silence to saying the something which is not everything that should be said.”

“Not altogether a fool," said G., "but then he's a poet, which I take to be only one remove from a fool.""True," said Dupin, after a long and thoughtful whiff from his meerschaum, "although I have been guilty of certain doggerel myself.”

“Enough," he said; "the cough is a mere nothing; it will not kill me. I shall not die of a cough." "True - true," I replied;”

“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.”

“After all, what is it?- this indescribable something which men will persist in terming "genius"? I agree with Buffon- with Hogarth- it is but diligence after all.Look at me!- how I labored- how I toiled- how I wrote! Ye Gods, did I not write? I knew not the word "ease." By day I adhered to my desk, and at night, a pale student, I consumed the midnight oil. You should have seen me- you should. I leaned to the right. I leaned to the left. I sat forward. I sat backward. I sat tete baissee (as they have it in the Kickapoo), bowing my head close to the alabaster page. And, through all, I- wrote. Through joy and through sorrow, I-wrote. Through hunger and through thirst, I-wrote. Through good report and through ill report- I wrote. Through sunshine and through moonshine, I-wrote. What I wrote it is unnecessary to say. The style!- that was the thing. I caught it from Fatquack- whizz!- fizz!- and I am giving you a specimen of it now.”

“True! - nervous - very, very nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad?”

“The result of law inviolate is perfection–right–negative happiness. The result of law violate is imperfection, wrong, positive pain.”