Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality.
Edgar Allan PoeMen have called me mad; but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligenceโ whether much that is gloriousโ whether all that is profoundโ does not spring from disease of thoughtโ from moods of mind exalted at the expense of the general intellect.
Edgar Allan PoeIn death - no! even in the grave all is not lost. Else there is no immortality for man. Arousing from the most profound slumbers, we break the gossamer web of some dream. Yet in a second afterward, (so frail may that web have been) we remember not that we have dreamed.
Edgar Allan PoeAfter reading all that has been written, and after thinking all that can be thought, on the topics of God and the soul, the man who has a right to say that he thinks at all, will find himself face to face with the conclusion that, on these topics, the most profound thought is that which can be the least easily distinguished from the most superficial sentiment.
Edgar Allan PoeTell a scoundrel, three or four times a day, that he is the pink of probity, and you make him at least the perfection of "respectability" in good earnest. On the other hand, accuse an honorable man, too petinaciously, of being a villain, and you fill him with a perverse ambition to show you that you are not altogether in the wrong.
Edgar Allan Poe