“There are some secrets which do not permit themselves to be told.”

“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.”

“...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.”

“...If you do not take it up with you in some way, I shall be under the necessity of breaking your head with this shovel”

“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.”

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

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