Tales of Terror and Mystery

His knowledge was greater than his wisdom, and his powers were far superior to his character.

The charlatan is always the pioneer... The quack of yesterday is the professor of tomorrow.

It is hard luck on a young fellow to have expensive tastes, great expectations, aristocratic connections but no actual money in his pocket, and no profession by which he may earn any.

It was a singular bedroom, with its high walls of brown volumes, but there could be no more agreeable furniture to a bookworm like myself, and there is no scent so pleasant to my nostrils as that faint, subtle reek which comes from an ancient book. I assured him that I could desire no more charming chamber, and no more congenial surroundings.

His tastes leaned toward the marvellous and the monstrous, and I have heard that his experiments in the direction of the unknown have passed all the bounds of civilization and of decorum.

It is a rare thing for me to meet anyone who takes an intelligent interest in such matters. People can find time for such trivialities as sport or society, and yet the beetles are overlooked.

This world of ours appears to be separated by a slight and precarious margin of safety from a most singular and unexpected danger.

I was expecting a rather long visit to Bankruptcy Court at the time, and this interruption seemed almost providential.

The abominable goth!" he cried.

... this imminent danger seemed to take bodily shape, and I could almost fancy that I saw this most loathsome and dangerous of all the fiends crouching closely in his very shadow, like a half-cowed beast which slinks beside its keeper, ready at any unguarded moment to spring at his throat.