That is another of your odd notions," said the Prefect, who had a fashion of calling every thing "odd" that was beyond his comprehension, and thus lived amid an absolute legion of "oddities.

I am above the weakness of seeking to establish a sequence of cause and effect, between the disaster and the atrocity.

Mysteries force a man to think, and so injure his health.

Most writers - poets in especial - prefer having it understood that they compose by a species of fine frenzy - an ecstatic intuition - and would positively shudder at letting the public take a peep behind the scenes.

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 then this might swell from my lyre in the sky.

In efforts to soar above our nature, we invariably fall below it.

For my own part, I have never had a thought which I could not set down in words, with even more distinctness than that with which I conceived it.