The past is a pebble in my shoe. The death of a beautiful woman, is unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world. A wrong is unredressed when retribution overtakes its redresser. It is equally unredressed when the avenger fails to make himself felt as such to him who has done the wrong. From childhood's hour I have not been. As others were, I have not seen. As others saw, I could not awaken. My heart to joy at the same tone. And all I loved, I loved alone. I do not suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it. Years of love have been forgot, In the hatred of a minute. I have no faith in human perfectability. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active - not more happy - nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago. Indeed, there is an eloquence in true enthusiasm that is not to be doubted.

Of puns it has been said that those who most dislike them are those who are least able to utter them. ...that fitful strain of melancholy which will ever be found inseperable from the perfection of the beautiful. I have, indeed, no abhorrence of danger, except in its absolute effect - in terror. It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain; but once conceived, it haunted me day and night. There are some secrets which do not permit themselves to be told.

I have absolutely no pleasure in the stimulants in which I sometimes so madly indulge. It has not been in the pursuit of pleasure that I have periled life and reputation and reason. It has been the desperate attempt to escape from torturing memories, from a sense of insupportable loneliness and a dread of some strange impending doom. Where was your all-loving god when he was really needed? That which you mistake for madness is but an over-acuteness of the senses. Never to suffer would never to have been blessed. We loved with a love that was more than love.

And so being young and dipped in folly I fell in love with melancholy. A judge at common law may be an ordinary man; a good judge of a carpet must be a genius. Yet we met; and fate bound us together at the alter,and I never spoke of passion nor thought of love. She, however shunned society, and, attaching herself to me alone rendered me happy. It is a happiness to wonder; it is a happiness to dream. That man is not truly brave who is afraid either to seem or to be, when it suits him, a coward. Even in the grave, all is not lost.

That pleasure which is at once the most pure, the most elevating and the most intense, is derived, I maintain, from the contemplation of the beautiful. To elevate the soul, poetry is necessary. It will be found, in fact, that the ingenious are always fanciful, and the truly imaginative never otherwise than analytic. Proprieties of place, and especially of time, are the bugbears which terrify mankind from the contemplation of the magnificent. The idea of God, infinity, or spirit stands for the possible attempt at an impossible conception.

The truth is, I am heartily sick of this life & of the nineteenth century in general. The generous Critic fann'd the Poet's fire, And taught the world with reason to admire. That single thought is enough. The impulse increases to a wish, the wish to a desire, the desire to an uncontrollable longing, and the longing (to the deep regret and mortification of the speaker, and in defiance of all consequences,) is indulged. I wish I could write as mysterious as a cat. Depend upon it, after all, Thomas, Literature is the most noble of professions. In fact, it is about the only one fit for a man. For my own part, there is no seducing me from the path.

Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best have gone to their eternal rest. Imperceptibly the love of these discords grew upon me as my love of music grew stronger. I have great faith in fools; self-confidence my friends call it. Sleep, those little slices of death — how I loathe them. There are two bodies — the rudimental and the complete; corresponding with the two conditions of the worm and the butterfly. What we call "death," is but the painful metamorphosis. Our present incarnation is progressive, preparatory, temporary. Our future is perfected, ultimate, immortal. The ultimate life is the full design.

All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream. The depth lies in the valleys where we seek her, and not upon the mountain-tops where she is found. Art is to look at not to criticize. To vilify a great man is the readiest way in which a little man can himself attain greatness. 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.

I felt that I breathed an atmosphere of sorrow. There are few persons, even among the calmest thinkers, who have not occasionally been startled into a vague yet thrilling half credence in the supernatural, by coincidences of so seemingly marvellous a character that, as mere coincidences, the intellect has been unable to receive them. Experience has shown, and a true philosophy will always show, that a vast, perhaps the larger portion of the truth arises from the seemingly irrelevant. A short story must have a single mood and every sentence must build towards it. All religion, my friend, is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination, and poetry.

As a poet and as a mathematician, he would reason well; as a mere mathematician, he could not have reasoned at all. Even with the utterly lost, to whom life and death are equally jests, there are matters of which no jest can be made. Beauty of whatever kind, in its supreme development, invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears. With me poetry has not been a purpose, but a passion. If we cannot comprehend God in his visible works, how then in his inconceivable thoughts, that call the works into being?

The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins? Every poem should remind the reader that they are going to die. Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality. Sometimes I’m terrified of my heart; of its constant hunger for whatever it is it wants. The way it stops and starts. Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.

There are moments when even to the sober eye of reason, the world of our sad humanity may assume the semblance of Hell. In one case out of a hundred a point is excessively discussed because it is obscure; in the ninety-nine remaining it is obscure because it is excessively discussed. Science has not yet taught us if madness is or is not the sublimity of the intelligence. As for Republicanism, no analogy could be found for it upon the face of the earth—unless we except the case of the "prairie dogs," an exception which seems to demonstrate, if anything, that democracy is a very admirable form of government — for dogs. I was never really insane except upon occasions when my heart was touched.

I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity. To die laughing must be the most glorious of all glorious deaths! Now this is the point. You fancy me a mad. Madmen know nothing. But you should have seen me. You should have seen how wisely I proceeded... Perversity is the human thirst for self-torture. Stupidity is a talent for misconception.

I intend to put up with nothing that I can put down. And if I died, at least I died
For thee! for thee! There was much of the beautiful, much of the wanton, much of the bizarre, something of the terrible, and not a little of that which might have excited disgust. Man's real life is happy, chiefly because he is ever expecting that it soon will be so. Mysteries force a man to think, and so injure his health.

In the Heaven's above, the angels, whispering to one another, can find, among their burning terms of love, none so devotional as that of 'Mother. If you wish to forget anything on the spot, make a note that this thing is to be remembered. I remained to much inside my head and ended up losing my mind. Invisible things are the only realities. Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.

The true genius shudders at incompleteness - and usually prefers silence to saying something which is not everything it should be. I dread the events of the future, not in themselves but in their results. Lord help my poor soul. Believe only half of what you see and nothing that you hear. You call it hope-that fire of fire! It is but agony of desire.

The ninety and nine are with dreams, content but the hope of the world made new, is the hundredth man who is grimly bent on making those dreams come true. It is by no means an irrational fancy that, in a future existence, we shall look upon what we think our present existence, as a dream. Poetry is the rhythmical creation of beauty in words. When a madman appears thoroughly sane, indeed, it is high time to put him in a straight jacket. In criticism I will be bold, and as sternly, absolutely just with friend and foe. From this purpose nothing shall turn me.

It is the nature of truth in general, as of some ores in particular, to be richest when most superficial. 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. Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practise to deceive. For all we live to know is known. ..for her whom in life thou didn't abhor, in death thou shalt adore.

If you run out of ideas follow the road; you'll get there. You will observe that the stories told are all about money-seekers, not about money-finders. When, indeed, men speak of Beauty, they mean, precisely, not a quality, as is supposed, but an effect - they refer, in short, just to that intense and pure elevation of soul - not of intellect, or of heart. A man's grammar, like Caesar's wife, should not only be pure, but above suspicion of impurity. There is something in the unselfish and self-sacrificing love of a brute, which goes directly to the heart of him who has had frequent occasion to test the paltry friendship and gossamer fidelity of mere Man.

It is a happiness to wonder; it is a happiness to dream. There are few cases in which mere popularity should be considered a proper test of merit; but the case of song-writing is, I think, one of the few. No pictorial or sculptural combinations of points of human loveliness, do more than approach the living and breathing human beauty as it gladdens our daily path. There is no exquisite beauty… without some strangeness in the proportion. But it is a trait in the perversity of human nature to reject the obvious and the ready, for the far-distant and equivocal.

Sensations are the great things, after all. Should you ever be drowned or hung, be sure and make a note of your sensations; they will be worth to you ten guineas a sheet. 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.'