"No spectacle can be more pitiable than that of a man without the commonest school education busying himself in attempts to instruct mankind on topics of polite literature."

"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."

"The ‛Imp of the Perverse’ is a radical, a primitive impulse—elementary, and altogether indissoluble."

"It was night, and the rain fell; and falling, it was rain, but, having fallen, it was blood."

"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 o…"