And because our reason violently deters us from the brink, therefore, do we the more impetuously approach it. There is no passion in nature so demoniacally impatient, as that of him, who shuddering upon the edge of a precipice, thus meditates a plunge. To indulge for a moment, in any attempt at thought, is to be inevitably lost; for reflection but urges us to forbear, and therefore it is, I say, that we cannot. If there be no friendly arm to check us, or if we fail in a sudden effort to prostrate ourselves backward from the abyss, we plunge, and are destroyed.

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

The mere imitation, however accurate, of what is in Nature, entitles no man to the sacred name of Artist

The nose of a mob is its imagination. By this, at any time, it can be quietly led.

Invisible things are the only realities.

True! - nervous - very, very nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad?

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.