Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
"'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door-
                Only this, and nothing more."



Genius and Imagination

"It will be found, in fact, that the ingenious are always fanciful, and the truly imaginative never otherwise than analytic."

- from "The Murders in the Rue Morgue"

"It is more than probable that I am not understood; but I fear, indeed, that it is in no manner possible to convey to the mind of the merely general reader, an adequate idea of that nervous intensity of interest with which, in my case, the powers of meditation (not to speak technically) busied and buried themselves, in the contemplation of even the most ordinary objects of the universe."

- from "Berenice"

Madness vs. Intelligence

"Men have called me mad; but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence� whether much that is glorious� whether all that is profound� does not spring from disease of thought� from moods of mind exalted at the expense of the general intellect."

- from "Eleonora"

Daydreaming

"They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night."

- from "Eleonora"

"Keeping these impressions in view, I was cautious in what I said before the young lady; for I could not be sure that she was sane; and, in fact, there was a certain restless brilliancy about her eyes which half led me to imagine she was not."

- from "The System of Dr. Tarr and Prof. Fether"

Sensationalism

"We should bear in mind that, in general, it is the object of our newspapers rather to create a sensation - to make a point - than to further the cause of truth."

- from "The Mystery of Marie Roget"