The Complete Stories of Edgar Allan Poe

The heathen philosopher, when he had a mind to eat a grape, would open his lips when he put it into his mouth, meaning thereby that grapes were made to eat and lips to open.”

As You Like It.

At Venice, in the year —, in the street —, lived Pedro Garcia, a metaphysician. – With regard to date and residence, circumstances of a private and sacred nature forbid me to be more explicit. In all mental qualifications our hero was gigantic. Moreover, in bodily circumference, he had no cause of complaint; but, in right ascension, four feet five was the philosopher’s ne plus ultra

“There is no exquisite beauty,” says Bacon, Lord Verulam, speaking truly of all the forms and genera of beauty, “without some strangeness in the proportion.” Yet, although I saw that the features of Ligeia were not of a classic regularity – although I perceived that her loveliness was indeed “exquisite,” and felt that there was much of “strangeness” pervading it, yet I have tried in vain to detect the irregularity and to trace home my own perception of “the strange.”

A thousand vague and lachrymatory fancies took possesion of my soul-and even the idea of suicide flitted across my brain; but it is a trait in the perversity of human nature to reject the obvious and the ready, for the far-distant and equivocal.

Most philosophers, upon many points of philosophy, are still very unphilosophical. William Godwin, however, says in his “Mandeville,” that “invisible things are the only realities,” and this, all will allow, is a case in point.

O Breathe not, etc

“Thou wretch! – thou vixen! – thou shrew!” said I to my wife on the morning after our wedding; “thou witch! – thou hag! – thou whippersnapper – thou sink of iniquity! – thou fiery-faced quintessence of all that is abominable! – thou – thou-”

Brethren, I come from lands afar

To show you all what fools you are.

In consideration of certain mental endowments, which it would be unnecessary to specify, and in farther consideration of the sum of one thousand Louis d’or, I, being aged one year and one month, do, hereby, from this date, make over, to the bearer of this bond, all my right, title, and appurtenance in the shadow called ‘my soul.’

Brethren, I come from lands afar

To show you all what fools you are.

the beautiful red leather of Morocco