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. Who has not, a hundred times, found himself committing a vile or a 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 judgment, to violate that which is Law, merely because we understand it to be such?

He must be theory-mad beyond redemption who ... shall ... persist in attempting to reconcile the obstinate oils and waters of Poetry and Truth.

Sometimes I’m terrified of my heart; of its constant hunger for whatever it is it wants. The way it stops and starts.

Perched upon a bust of Pallas, just above my chamber door,- Perched, and sat, and nothing more.

There are moments when, even to the sober eye of Reason, the world of our sad humanity must assume the aspect of Hell.

Read this and thought of you: 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. ~ Edgar Allen Poe

Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore.