"Come! let the burial rite be read — the funeral song be sung! — An anthem for the queenliest dead that ever died so young — A dirge for her the doubly dead in that she died so young."

"In this boat we were in the habit of going on some of the maddest freaks in the world."

"And when, amid no earthly moans, Down, down that town shall settle hence, Hell, rising from a thousand thrones, Shall do it reverence."

"So blend the turrets and shadows there That all seem pendulous in air, While from a proud tower in the town Death looks gigantically down."

"Lo! Death has reared himself a throne In a strange city lying alone Far down within the dim West, Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best Have gone to their eternal rest."

"When I think of the long twenty-one years that I have called you father, and you have called me son, I cry like a child to think that it should all end in this."

"Believe nothing you hear, and only one half that you see."

"These fellows, knowing the extravagant gullibility of the age, set their wits to work in the imagination of improbable possibilities — of odd accidents, as they term them; but to a reflecting intellect (like mine," I added, in parenthesis, putting my forefinger unconsciously to the side of my nose,) "to a contemplative understanding such as I myself possess, it seems evident at once that the marvelous increase of late in these 'odd accidents' is by far the oddest accident of all. For my own part, I intend to believe nothing henceforward that has anything of the 'singular' about it."

"I attacked with great resolution the editorial matter, and, reading it from beginning to end without understanding a syllable, conceived the possibility of its being Chinese, and so re-read it from the end to the beginning, but with no more satisfactory result."

"As for myself, I am simply Hop-Frog, the jester — and this is my last jest."

"Hear the mellow wedding bells Golden bells! What a world of happiness their harmony foretells Through the balmy air of night How they ring out their delight!"

"Keeping time, time, time, In a sort of Runic rhyme, To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells From the bells, bells, bells, bells, Bells, bells, bells."

"Thank Heaven! the crisis — The danger is past, And the lingering illness Is over at last — And the fever called "Living" Is conquered at last."

"O God! Can I not save One from the pitiless wave? Is all that we see or seem But a dream within a dream?"

"You are not wrong, who deem That my days have been a dream; Yet if hope has flown away In a night, or in a day, In a vision, or in none, Is it therefore the less gone? All that we see or seem Is but a dream within a dream."

"Over the Mountains Of the Moon, Down the Valley of the Shadow, Ride, boldly ride," The shade replied, — "If you seek for Eldorado!"

"Gaily bedight, A gallant knight, In sunshine and in shadow, Had journeyed long, Singing a song, In search of Eldorado."

"Depend upon it, after all, Thomas, Literature is the most noble of professions. In fact, it is about the only one fit for a man. For my own part, there is no seducing me from the path."

"There is no oath which seems to me so sacred as that sworn by the all-divine love I bear you. — By this love, then, and by the God who reigns in Heaven, I swear to you that my soul is incapable of dishonor — that, with the exception of occasional follies and excesses which I bitterly lament, but to which I have been driven by intolerable sorrow, and which are hourly committed by others without attracting any notice whatever — I can call to mind no act of my life which would bring a blush to my cheek — or to yours. If I have erred at all, in this regard, it has been on the side of what the world would call a Quixotic sense of the honorable — of the chivalrous."

"Can it be fancied that Deity ever vindictively Made in his image a mannikin merely to madden it?"

"I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity."

"For the love of God Montresor!"

"The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could; but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge. You, who so well know the nature of my soul, will not suppose, however, that I gave utterance to a threat. At length I would be avenged; this was a point definitely settled — but the very definitiveness with which it was resolved precluded the idea of risk. I must not only punish, but punish with impunity. A wrong is unredressed when retribution overtakes its redresser. It is equally unredressed when the avenger fails to make himself felt as such to him who has done the wrong."

"Thou wouldst be loved? — then let thy heart From its present pathway part not! Being everything which now thou art, Be nothing which thou art not. So with the world thy gentle ways, Thy grace, thy more than beauty, Shall be an endless theme of praise, And love — a simple duty."

"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."

"By a route obscure and lonely, Haunted by ill angels only, Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT, On a black throne reigns upright, I have reached these lands but newly From an ultimate dim Thule — From a wild weird clime that lieth, sublime, Out of SPACE — out of TIME."

"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?"

"Man is an animal that diddles, and there is no animal that diddles but man."

"While the angels, all pallid and wan, Uprising, unveiling, affirm That the play is the tragedy, "Man", And its hero the Conqueror Worm."

"And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all."

"To observe attentively is to remember distinctly."

"The best chess-player in Christendom may be little more than the best player of chess; but proficiency in whist implies capacity for success in all these more important undertakings where mind struggles with mind."

"Had the routine of our life at this place been known to the world, we should have been regarded as madmen —; although, perhaps, as madmen of a harmless nature."

"They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night."

"A dark unfathom'd tide Of interminable pride — A mystery, and a dream, Should my early life seem."

"Helen, thy beauty is to me Like those Nicean barks of yore, That gently, o'er a perfumed sea, The weary, wayworn wanderer bore To his own native shore.On desperate seas long wont to roam, Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face, Thy Naiad airs have brought me home To the glory that was Greece And the grandeur that was Rome."

"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."

"It is with literature as with law or empire — an established name is an estate in tenure, or a throne in possession."

"Hast thou not torn the Naiad from her flood, The Elfin from the green grass, and from me The summer dream beneath the tamarind tree?"

"And the cloud that took the form (When the rest of Heaven was blue) Of a demon in my view."

"From childhood's hour I have not been As others were — I have not seen As others saw — I could not bring My passions from a common spring — From the same source I have not taken My sorrow — I could not awaken My heart to joy at the same tone — And all I lov'd — I lov'd alone —"

"Years of love have been forgot In the hatred of a minute."

"Sound loves to revel in a summer night."

"The happiest day — the happiest hour My sear'd and blighted heart hath known, The highest hope of pride and power, I feel hath flown."

"O, human love! thou spirit given, On Earth, of all we hope in Heaven!"

"If I could dwell Where Israfel Hath dwelt, and he where I, He might not sing so wildly well A mortal melody, While a bolder note than this might swell From my lyre within the sky."

"Yes, Heaven is thine; but this Is a world of sweets and sours; Our flowers are merely—flowers."

"He was too warm on picking work to dwell, But faggoted his notions as they fell; And if they rhymed and rattled, all was well."

"Dryden has neither a tender heart nor a lofty sense of moral dignity: where his language is poetically impassioned it is mostly upon unpleasing subjects; such as the follies, vice, and crimes of classes of men or of individuals."

"I learned versification chiefly from Dryden's works, who has improved it much beyond any of our former poets, and would probably have brought it to its perfection, had not he been unhappily obliged to write so often in haste."