242 Quotations

Edgar Allan Poe, Broadway Journal

Never was a bobbery more delightful than that which we have just succeeded in kicking up all around about Boston Common. We never saw the Frog-Pondians so lively in our lives. They seem absolutely to be upon the point of waking up. In about nine days the puppies may get open their eyes.

Edgar Allan Poe, The Fall of the House of Usher

[W]ith the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit. I looked upon the scene before me … with an utter depression of soul …. There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart—an unredeemed dreariness of thought which no goading of the imagination could torture into aught of the sublime.

Edgar Allan Poe, The Fall of the House of Usher

[T]he consciousness of the rapid increase of my superstition … served mainly to accelerate the increase itself. Such, I have long known, is the paradoxical law of all sentiments having terror as a basis.

Mary Shelley, Preface to Frankenstein

Invention, it must humbly be admitted, does not consist in creating out of void, but out of chaos

the materials must, in the first place, be afforded

it can give form to dark, shapeless substances, but cannot bring into being the substance itself.

Victor Frankenstein (in Frankenstein), Frankenstein

Whence, I often asked myself, did the principle of life proceed? It was a bold question, and one which has ever been considered a mystery

yet with how many things are we upon the brink of becoming acquainted if cowardice or carelessness did not constrain our inquiries.

Victor Frankenstein (in Frankenstein), Frankenstein

I slept, indeed, but I was disturbed by the wildest dreams. I thought I saw Elizabeth… I embraced her, but as I imprinted the first kiss on her lips, they became livid with the hue of death, and I thought that I held the corpse of my mother in my arms… and I saw the grave-worms crawling in the folds of her flannel.

William Blake (via Orc), America a Prophecy

Let the slave grinding at the mill run out into the field, Let him look up into the heavens and laugh in the bright air

Let the enchainèd soul, shut up in darkness and in sighing… Rise and look out

his chains are loose, his dungeon doors are open

And let his wife and children return /…/ Singing: For Empire is no more, and now the Lion and Wolf shall cease.

William Wordsworth, Preface to Lyrical Ballads

The First Volume of these Poems …. was published, as an experiment which, I hoped, might be of some use to ascertain, how far, by fitting to metrical arrangement a selection of the real language of men in a state of vivid sensation, that sort of pleasure and that quantity of pleasure may be imparted, which a poet may rationally endeavor to impart.

William Wordsworth, Preface to Lyrical Ballads

[A] multitude of causes unknown to former times are now acting with a combined force to blunt the discriminating powers of the mind, and unfitting it for all voluntary exertion to reduce it to a state of almost savage torpor.

William Wordsworth, Preface to Lyrical Ballads

[T]he human mind is capable of excitement without the application of gross and violent stimulants …. One being is elevated above another in proportion as he possesses this capacity.

Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France

We have an inheritable crown

an inheritable peerage

and an house of commons and a people inheriting privileges, franchises, and liberties, from a long line of ancestors.

Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France

In this partnership all men have equal rights, but not to equal things. He that has but five shillings in the partnership, has as good a right to it, as he that has five hundred pound has to his larger proportion. But he has not a right to an equal dividend in the product of the joint stock.

Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France

[T]hat sort of reason which banishes the affections is incapable of filling their place. These public affections, combined with manners, are required sometimes as supplements, sometimes as correctives, always as aids to the law.

Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Men

It is necessary … that there are rights which men inherit at their birth, as rational creatures, who were raised above the brute creation by their improvable faculties

and that in receiving these, not from their forefathers but, from God, prescription can never undermine natural rights.

Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Men

A father may dissipate his property without his child having any right to complain

-- but should he attempt to sell him for a slave, or fetter him with laws contrary to reason, nature, in enabling him to discern good from evil, teaches him to break the ignoble chain.

Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Men

The civilization which has taken place in Europe has been very partial …. And what has stopped its progress? — hereditary property – hereditary honors. The man has been changed into an artificial monster by the station in which he was born.

Phillis Wheatley, On Being Brought from Africa to America

Remember, Christians, Negros, black as Cain, / May be refin’d and join th’ angelic train.