The Tell Tale Heart Quotes

“No man,” Poe himself wrote, “has recorded, no man has dared to record, the wonders of his inner life.”

He was remarkable for self-respect, without haughtiness.

“He had a sensitive and tender heart and would do anything for a friend. His nature was entirely free from selfishness.”

We saw but one presentiment of the man— a quiet, patient, industrious and most gentlemanly person.”

He walked the streets, in madness or melancholy, with lips moving in indistinct curses, or with eyes upturned in passionate prayer (never for himself, for he felt, or professed to feel, that he was already damned, but) for their happiness who at the moment were objects of his idolatry;

“Your friend always,” EDGAR A. POE.

My mind, however, was too much occupied to sleep, and I lay the whole night buried in meditation.

I determined to depart, yet live—to leave the world, yet continue to exist—

He appeared extremely uneasy, looking anxiously around him, fluttering his wings, and making a loud cooing noise, but could not be persuaded to trust himself from off the car.

Below me in the ocean lay a cluster of black specks, which undoubtedly were islands.

My mind, however, was too much occupied to sleep, and I lay the whole night buried in meditation.

It is therefore evident that, ascend as high as we may, we cannot, literally speaking, arrive at a limit beyond which no atmosphere is to be found. It must exist, I argued; although it may exist in a state of infinite rarefaction.

I breathed, however, at every moment, with more and more difficulty, and each inhalation was attended with a troublesome spasmodic action of the chest.

When darkness at length overtook me, I went to bed in great anxiety, fearing to pass over the object of so much curiosity when I should have no opportunity of observing it.

When my fears and astonishment had in some degree subsided, I had little difficulty in supposing it to be some mighty volcanic fragment ejected from that world to which I was so rapidly approaching, and, in all probability, one of that singular class of substances occasionally picked up on the earth, and termed meteoric stones for want of a better appellation.

My agitation was extreme; for I had now little doubt of soon reaching the end of my perilous voyage.

Sleep was a matter nearly out of the question.

“Well! now listen!—if you will venture out on the limb as far as you think safe, and not let go the beetle, I’ll make you a present of a silver dollar as soon as you get down.”

“Curse your stupidity! do you know your right hand from your left?”

You recollect also, that I became quite vexed at you for insisting that my drawing resembled a death’s-head.

It was at this moment that his eyes, and mine also, fell upon the scrap of parchment, which I then supposed to be paper.”

Pirates, you know, have nothing to do with goats; they appertain to the farming interest.”

Have you ever heard of any important treasure being unearthed along the coast?”

I now thought it possible that the coating of dirt might have something to do with the failure;

“I knew, could have reference to nothing but a telescope; for the word ‘glass’ is rarely employed in any other sense by seamen.

Adjusting the focus of the telescope, I again looked, and now made it out to be a human skull.”

“But what have we here? Heavens! the town is swarming with wild beasts! How terrible a spectacle!—how dangerous a peculiarity!”

He runs!—he leaps!—he flies!

But the Marchesa! She will now receive her child—she will press it to her heart—she will cling to its little form, and smother it with her caresses.

“I see, I see you are astonished at my apartment—at my statues—my pictures—my originality of conception in architecture and upholstery! absolutely drunk, eh, with my magnificence?

“I have no right to be merry at your expense. You might well have been amazed.

From me, and from our misty clime,Where weeps the silver willow!

“To meet thee in that hollow vale.”

You were not to be found, and I was fearful of losing a bargain.”

For weeks, for months, I pondered upon the means of the murder.

“To die laughing, must be the most glorious of all glorious deaths!

Ah, dream too bright to last!

Where weeps the silver willow!

Follow me, or I stab you where you stand!

There may be a class of beings, human once, but now invisible to humanity, to whom, from afar, our disorder may seem order—our unpicturesqueness picturesque;

a nature which is not God, nor an emanation from God, but which still is nature in the sense of the handiwork of the angels that hover between man and God.

For the occasional scene nothing can be better—for the constant view nothing worse.

“I was never kinder to the old man than during the whole week before I killed him.”

“It is nothing but the wind in the chimney—it is only a mouse crossing the floor,” or “It is merely a cricket which has made a single chirp.”

In snatches, they learn something of the wisdom which is of good, and more of the mere knowledge which is of evil.

“It is all over with us, and may God have mercy upon our souls!”

“It is natural to inquire how they could float such a vast distance, upon the most frequented part of the Atlantic, and not be discovered all this time.

“There is no exquisite beauty, without some strangeness in the proportion.”

She loved me I should not have doubted; and I might have been easily aware that, in a bosom such as hers, love would have reigned no ordinary passion.

She seemed conscious of my weakness or my folly, and, smiling, called it Fate.

“I am dying, yet shall I live.”

I seemed to feel that I had an important part to play, without exactly understanding what it was.

It is useless, of course, to dwell upon my joy—upon my transport—upon my illimitable ecstasy of heart.

“You are all mad—every one of you. I am as positive that yesterday was Sunday as I am that I sit upon this chair.”

But I am a man of my word—mark that!

“Come to me, by all means, my dear good friend, as soon as you receive this. Come and help us to rejoice.

“The ideas you have suggested are to me, I confess, utterly novel.

Never was triumph more consummate; never was defeat borne with so ill a grace.

To chase the hare, and follow too, The hounds, and horn, and all the crew, And when they’re gone, to sit and muse anew.”

“Had it lived long, it would have been Lilies without, roses within.”

A mountain, to be sure, by the mere sentiment of physical magnitude which it conveys, does impress us with a sense of the sublime—

I make Beauty, therefore—using the word as inclusive of the sublime—I make Beauty the province of the poem, simply because it is an obvious rule of Art that effects should be made to spring as directly as possible from their causes:—

“Oh, God! oh, Heaven—how my heart beats in coupling those two words.”

Shakespeare is in possession of the world’s good opinion, and yet Shakespeare is the greatest of poets.

A fool thinks Shakespeare a great poet—yet the fool has never read Shakespeare.”

Therefore the end of instruction should be happiness; and happiness is another name for pleasure;-therefore the end of instruction should be pleasure:

He who regards it directly and intensely sees, it is true, the star, but it is the star without a ray-while he who surveys it less inquisitively is conscious of all for which the star is useful to us below-its brilliancy and its beauty.

I love a sheep from the bottom of my heart.”