Ah, not in knowledge is happiness, but in the acquisition of knowledge! In for ever knowing, we are for ever blessed; but to know all were the curse of a fiend.
Chi sogna di giorno conosce molte cose che sfuggono a chi sogna solo di notte.
There are chords in the hearts of the most reckless which cannot be touched without emotion. Even with the utterly lost, to whom life and death are equally jests, there are matters of which no jest can be made.
And his brow was lofty with thought, and his eye wild with care; and, in the few furrows upon his cheek I read the fables of sorrow, and weariness, and disgust with mankind, and a longing after solitude.
It was night, and the rain fell; and falling, it was rain, but, having fallen, it was blood. And I stood in the morass among the tall and the rain fell upon my head-and the lilies sighed one unto the other in the solemnity of their desolation.
Did there not cross your mind some thought of the physical power of words? Is not every word an impulse on the air?
As I imagined, the ship proves to be in a current; if that appellation can properly be given to a tide, which, howling and shrieking by the white ice, thunders on to the southward with a velocity like the headlong dashing of a cataract.
At times we gasped for breath at an elevation beyond the albatross – at times became dizzy with the velocity of our descent into some watery hell, where the air grew stagnant, and no sound disturbed the slumbers of the kraken.
This latter was a remarkably large and beautiful animal, entirely black, and sagacious to an astonishing degree.
Quoth the raven “Nevermore.
Men have called me mad; but the question is not settled whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence.
A short story must have a single mood and every sentence must build towards it.
It was night, and the rain fell; and falling, it was rain, but, having fallen, it was blood.
All suffering originates from craving, from attachment, from desire.
Believe only half of what you see and nothing that you hear.
Leave my loneliness unbroken.
There is no beauty without some strangeness.
And then there stole into my fancy, like a rich musical note, the thought of what sweet rest there must be in the grave.
The fury of a demon instantly possessed me. I knew myself no longer. My original soul seemed, at once, to take its flight from my body; and a more than fiendish malevolence, gin-nurtured, thrilled every fibre of my frame.
A strong argument for the religion of Christ is this – that offences against Charity are about the only ones which men on their death-beds can be made – not to understand – but to feel – as crime.