Ligeia Quotes

“In beauty of face no maiden ever equaled her. It was the radiance of an opium-dream - an airy and spirit-lifting vision more wildly divine than the fantasies which hovered about the slumbering souls of the daughters of Delos.”
― Edgar Allan Poe, Ligeia

“In our endeavors to recall to memory something long forgotten, we often find ourselves upon the very verge of remembrance, without being able, in the end, to remember.”
― Edgar Allan Poe, Ligeia

“That motley drama—oh, be sure
It shall not be forgot!
With its Phantom chased for evermore
By a crowd that seize it not,
Through a circle that ever returneth in
To the self-same spot,
And much of Madness, and more of Sin,
And Horror the soul of the plot.”
― Edgar Allan Poe, Ligeia

“For eyes we have no models in the remotely antique.”
― Edgar Allan Poe, Ligeia

“I loathed her with a hatred belonging more to demon than to man.”
― Edgar Allan Poe, Ligeia

“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.”
― Edgar Allan Poe, Ligeia

“En la intensidad de su deseo de vivir, sólo vivir, el consuelo y la razón eran el colmo de la locura”
― Edgar Allan Poe, Ligeia

“In beauty of face no maiden ever equaled her. It was the radiance of an opium-dream - and airy and spirit-lifting vision more wildly divine than the phantasies which hovered about the slumbering souls of the daughters of Delos. Yet her features were not of that regular mould which we have been falsely taught to worship in the classical labors of the heathen.”
― Edgar Allan Poe, Ligeia

“That 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 regained no ordinary passion. But in death only was I fully impressed with the strength of her affection.”
― Edgar Allan Poe, Ligeia

“Lo! 'tis a gala night
Within the lonesome latter years!
An angel throng, bewinged, bedight
In veils, and drowned in tears,
Sit in a theatre, to see
A play of hopes and fears [...]”
― Edgar Allan Poe, Ligeia

“L'uomo non cede agli angeli, né interamente alla morte, se non a causa della fiacchezza della sua minuscola volontà”
― Edgar Allan Poe, Ligeia

“I would have soothed-I would have reasoned; but, in the intensity of her wild desire for life,-for life-but for life-solace and reason were the uttermost folly.”
― Edgar Allan Poe, Ligeia

“Sit in a theatre, to see a play of hopes and fears, while the orchestra breathes fitfully the music of the spheres”
― Edgar Allan Poe, Ligeia

“El hombre no se rinde a los ángeles, ni por entero a la muerte, salvo únicamente por la flaqueza de su débil voluntad.”
― Edgar Allan Poe, Ligeia

“Those eyes! those large, those shining, those divine orbs! they became to me twin stars of
Leda, and I to them devoutest of astrologers.”
― Edgar Allan Poe, Ligeia

“I cannot, for my soul, remember how, when, or even precisely where, I first became acquainted with the lady Ligeia.”
― Edgar Allan Poe, Ligeia

“And, indeed, if ever that spirit which is entitled Romance-if ever she, the wan and the misty-winged Ashtophet of idolatrous Egypt, presided, as they tell, over marriages ill-omened, then most surely she presided over mine”
― Edgar Allan Poe, Ligeia

“And the seraphs sob at vermin fangs”
― Edgar Allan Poe, Ligeia

“en nuestros esfuerzos por traer a la memoria una cosa olvidada desde hace largo tiempo, nos encontremos con frecuencia al borde mismo del recuerdo, sin ser al fin capaces de recordar. Y”
― Edgar Allan Poe, Ligeia

“And thus how frequently, in my intense scrutiny of Ligeia's eyes, have I felt approaching the full knowledge of their expression — felt it approaching — yet not quite be mine — and so at length entirely depart! And (strange, oh strangest mystery of all!) I found, in the commonest objects of the universe, a circle of analogies to that expression. I mean to say that, subsequently to the period when Ligeia's beauty passed into my spirit, there dwelling as in a shrine, I derived, from many existences in the material world, a sentiment such as I felt always aroused, within me by her large and luminous orbs. Yet not the more could I define that sentiment, or analyze, or even steadily view it. I recognized it, let me repeat, sometimes in the survey of a rapidly-growing vine — in the contemplation of a moth, a butterfly, a chrysalis, a stream of running water. I have felt it in the ocean; in the falling of a meteor. I have felt it in the glances of unusually aged people. And there are one or two stars in heaven... in a telescopic scrutiny of which I have been made aware of the feeling. I have been filled with it by certain sounds from stringed instruments, and not unfrequently by passages from books.”
― Edgar Allan Poe, Ligeia

“I derived, from many existences in the material world, a sentiment such as I always felt aroused within her large and luminous orbs [eyes]. Yet not the more could I define that sentiment, or even steadily view it. I recognised it, let me repeat, sometimes in the survey of rapidly-growing vine - in the contemplation of a moth, a butterfly, a chrysalis, a stream of running water. I have felt it in the ocean; in the falling of a meteor. I have felt it in the glances of unusually aged people. And there are one or two stars in heaven... in a telescopic scrutiny of which I have been made aware of the feeling. I have been filled with it by certain sounds from stringed instruments and not infrequently by passages in books.”
― Edgar Allan Poe, Ligeia

“And thus how frequently, in my intense scrutiny of Ligeia's eyes, have I felt approaching the full knowledge of their expression — felt it approaching — yet not quite be mine — and so at length entirely depart! And (strange, oh strangest mystery of all!) I found, in the commonest objects of the universe, a circle of analogies to that expression... I recognized it, let me repeat, sometimes in the survey of a rapidly-growing vine — in the contemplation of a moth, a butterfly, a chrysalis, a stream of running water. I have felt it in the ocean; in the falling of a meteor. I have felt it in the glances of unusually aged people... I have been filled with it by certain sounds from stringed instruments, and not unfrequently by passages from books.”
― Edgar Allan Poe, Ligeia

“Now, then, did my spirit fully and freely burn with more than all the fires of her own.”
― Edgar Allan Poe, Ligeia