“I was never really insane except upon occasions when my heart was touched.”

Last update July 8, 2025. History

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Edgar Allan Poe126

American author, poet, editor and literary critic 1809–1849

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“My aim is to understand love. I know how alive I felt when I was in love, and I know that everything I have now, however interesting it might seem, doesn't really excited me.
But love is a terrible thing: I've seen my girlfriends suffer and I don't want the same thing to happen to me. … Although my aim is to understand love, and although I suffer to think of people to whom I gave my heart, I see that those who touched my heart failed to arouse my body, and that those who aroused my body failed to touch my heart.”

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“On the infrequent occasions when I have been called upon in a formal place to play the bongo drums, the introducer never seems to find it necessary to mention that I also do theoretical physics.”

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“I enjoy talking to you. Your mind appeals to me. It resembles my own mind except that you happen to be insane.”

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“My body is a monster driven insane,
My heart is a fish toasted in flames.”

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“There is a charge

For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge
For the hearing of my heart -
It really goes.

And there is a charge, a very large charge,
For a word or a touch
Or a bit of blood

Or a piece of my hair or my clothes.”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

Source: Ariel: The Restored Edition

“I never lamented about the vicissitudes of time or complained of the turns of fortune except on the occasion when I was barefooted and unable to procure slippers [shoes]. But when I entered the great mosque of Kufah with a sore heart and beheld a man without feet I offered thanks to the bounty of God, consoled myself for my want of shoes and recited:
'A roast fowl is to the sight of a satiated man
Less valuable than a blade of fresh grass on the table
And to him who has no means nor power
A burnt turnip is a roasted fowl.”

Saadi book Gulistan of Sa'di

Source: Gulistan (1258), Chapter 3, story 19. Translated by Sir Edwin Arnold. ( Persian version https://ganjoor.net/saadi/golestan/gbab3/sh18/)

“I was never really insane except upon occasions when my heart was touched.”

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Edgar Allan Poe126

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