Actually, I do have doubts, all the time. Any thinking person does. There are so many sides to every question.
A feeling, for which I have no name, has taken possession of my soul.
It is evident that we are hurrying onward to some exciting knowledge – some never-to-be-imparted secret, whose attainment is destruction.
It was well said of a certain German book that ‘er lasst sich nicht lesen” – it does not permit itself to be read.
I saw no heaven – but in her eyes.
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.
Leave my loneliness unbroken! – quit the bust above my door!
There are few persons who have not, at some period of their lives, amused themselves in retracing the steps by which particular conclusions of their own minds have been attained. The occupation is often full of interest and he who attempts it for the first time is astonished by the apparently illimitable distance and incoherence between the starting-point and the goal.
There are surely other worlds than this – other thoughts than the thoughts of the multitude – other speculations than the speculations of the sophist. Who then shall call thy conduct into question? who blame thee for thy visionary hours, or denounce those occupations as a wasting away of life, which were but the overflowings of thine everlasting energies?
In the strange anomaly of my existence, feelings with me had never been of the heart, and my passions always were of the mind.
I do believe God gave me a spark of genius, but he quenched it in misery.
But the raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.
Tal vez sea la propia simplicidad del asunto lo que nos conduce al error.
And thus when by Poetry, or when by Music, the most entrancing of the poetic moods, we find ourselves melted into tears, we weep then, not... through excess of pleasure, but through a certain petulant, impatient sorrow at our inability to grasp now, wholly, here on earth, at once and forever, those divine and raptorous joys of which through the poem, or through the music, we attain to but brief and indeterminate glimpses.
So resolute is the world to despise anything which carries with it an air of simplicity.
Reaching out to her is like drinking from a memory.
He impaired his vision by holding the object too close. He might see, perhaps, one or two points with unusual clearness, but in so doing he, necessarily, lost sight of the matter as a whole. Thus there is such a thing as being too profound. Truth is not always in a well. In fact, as regards the more important knowledge, I do believe that she is invariably superficial. The depth lies in the valleys where we seek her, and not upon the mountain-tops where she is found.
And then there are times, Mr. Osgood, when one must just let go.” His gaze softened. “I believe,” he said after a moment, “that those are the happiest of times.
We will say, then, that I am mad. I grant, at least, that there are two distinct conditions of my mental existence – the condition of a lucid reason, not to be disputed, and belonging to the memory of events forming the first epoch of my life – and.
What chance – what one event brought this evil thing to pass, bear with me while I relate. Death approaches; and the shadow which foreruns him has thrown a softening influence over my spirit. I long, in passing through the dim valley, for the sympathy – I had nearly said for the pity – of my fellow men. I would fain have them believe that I have been, in some measure, the slave of circumstances beyond human control.