I have dwelt ever in realms apart from the visible world; spending my youth and adolescence in ancient and little-known books, and in roaming the fields and groves of the region near my ancestral home. I do not think that what I read in these books or saw in these fields and groves was exactly what other boys read and saw there; but of this I must say little, since detailed speech would but confirm those cruel slanders upon my intellect which I sometimes overhear from the whispers of the stealthy attendants around me. It is sufficient for me to relate events without analysing causes.

In relating the circumstances which have led to my confinement within this refuge for the demented, I am aware that my present position will create a natural d…

I am writing this under an appreciable mental strain, since by tonight I shall be no more. Penniless, and at the end of my supply of the drug which alone makes…

The best critics of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries demand perfect rhyming, and no aspirant for fame can afford to depart from a standard so universal. …

I have sometimes amused myself by endeavouring to fancy what would be the fate of an individual gifted, or rather accursed, with an intellect very far superior…

Where the statue stood Of Newton with his prism and silent face, The marble index of a mind forever Voyaging through strange seas of thought, alone.

I am the only being whose doom No tongue would ask no eye would mourn I never caused a thought of gloom A smile of joy since I was born In secret pleasure - se…