I began to reflect how magnificent a thing it was to die in such a manner, and how foolish it was in me to think of so paltry a consideration as my own individual life, in view of so wonderful a manifestation of God’s power.
You will say, no doubt, using the language of the law, that ‘to make out my case,’ I should rather undervalue, than insist upon a full estimation of the activity required in this matter. This may be the practice in law, but it is not the usage of reason.
The moon’s distance from the earth is, in round numbers, 240,000 miles.
Such weakness can scarcely be conceived, and to those who have never been similarly situated will, no doubt, appear unnatural;.
No more than any other talent, is that for music susceptible of complete enjoyment where there is no second party to appreciate its exercise; and it is only in common with other talents that it produces effects which may be fully enjoyed in solitude... the higher order of music is the most thoroughly estimated when we are exclusively alone.
Si no hay junto a nosotros un brazo amigo que nos detenga, o somos incapaces de alejarnos, nos arrojamos, nos aniquilamos en el abismo.
Quand un bon vin meuble mon estomac Je suis plus savant que Balzac – Plus sage que Pibrac; Mon brass seul faisant l’attaque De la nation Coseaque, La mettroit au sac; De Charon je passerois le lac En dormant dans son bac, J’irois au fier Eac, Sans que mon coeur fit tic ni tac, Premmer du tabac. – French Vaudeville.
And they hated her for her pride – But she grew in feeble health, And they love her – that she died.
His eye was like the eye of a vulture, the eye of one of those terrible birds that watch and wait while an animal dies, and then fall upon the dead body and pull it to pieces to eat it.
So I am mad, you say? You should have seen how careful I was to put the body where no one could find it. First I cut off the head, then the arms and the legs. I was careful not to let a single drop of blood fall on the floor. I pulled up three of the boards that formed the floor, and put the pieces of the body there. Then I put the boards down again, care fully, so carefully that no human eye could see that they had been moved.
There is no exquisite beauty,” says Bacon, Lord Verulam, speaking truly of all the forms and genera of beauty, “without some strangeness in the proportion.
The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could, but when he ventured upon insult I vowed revenge.
We stand upon the brink of a precipice. We peer into the abyss – we grow sick and dizzy. Our first impulse is to shrink away from the danger. Unaccountably we remain... it is but a thought, although a fearful one, and one which chills the very marrow of our bones with the fierceness of the delight of its horror. It is merely the idea of what would be our sensations during the sweeping precipitancy of a fall from such a height... for this very cause do we now the most vividly desire it.
The idea of suicide flitted across my brain; but it is a trait in the perversity of human nature to reject the obvious and the ready, for the far-distant and equivocal.
Is it sympathy for the sheep you wish to excite? I love a sheep from the bottom of my heart...
In short, we are madly erring through self-esteem in believing man, in either his temporal or future destinies, to be of more moment in the universe than that vast “clod of the valley” which he tills and contemns, and to which he denies a soul, for no more profound reason than that he does not behold it in operation.
At Paris, just after dark one gusty evening in the autumn of 18–, I was enjoying the twofold luxury of meditation and a meerschaum, in the company with my friend, C. Auguste Dupin, in his little back library, or book-closet, au troisieme, No. 33 Rue Dunot, Faubourg St. Germain.
I cannot, for my soul, remember how, when, or even precisely where, I first became acquainted with the lady Ligeia.
It was, perhaps, the narrow limits to which he thus confined himself upon the guitar, which gave birth, in great measure, to the fantastic character of his performances.
You have conquered, and I yield. Yet henceforward art thou also dead – dead to the world and its hopes. In me didst thou exist – and, in my death, see by this image, which is thine own, how utterly thou hast murdered thyself.