There are certain themes of which the interest is all-absorbing, but which are too entirely horrible for the purposes of legitimate fiction.

And the life of the ebony clock went out with that of the last of the gay. And the flames of the tripods expired. And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.

Tell 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.

And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting...

Even with the utterly lost, to whom life and death are equally jests, there are matters of which no jest can be made.

The analytical power should not be confounded with simple ingenuity; for while the analyst is necessarily ingenious, the ingenious man is often remarkably incapable of analysis.

For years your name never passed my lips, while my soul drank in, with a delirious thirst, all that was uttered in my presence respecting you.