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

As a poet and as a mathematician, he would reason well; as a mere mathematician, he could not have reasoned at all.

Were I called on to define, very briefly, the term Art, I should call it 'the reproduction of what the Senses perceive in Nature through the veil of the soul.' The mere imitation, however accurate, of what is in Nature, entitles no man to the sacred name of 'Artist.'

There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart - an unredeemed dreariness of thought which no goading of the imagination could torture into aught of the sublime

Believe me, there exists no such dilemma as that in which a gentleman is placed when he is forced to reply to a blackguard.

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

Once upon a midnight dreary