Edgar Allen Poe

It may well be doubted whether human ingenuity can construct an enigma... which human ingenuity may not, by proper application, resolve.

It will be hard to discover a better [method of education] than that which the experience of so many ages has already discovered, and this may be summed up as consisting in gymnastics for the body, and _music_ for the soul... For this reason is a musical education so essential; since it causes Rhythm and Harmony to penetrate most intimately into the soul, taking the strongest hold upon it, filling it with _beauty_ and making the man _beautiful-minded_.

The ingenious are always fanciful, and the truly imaginative never otherwise than analytic.

Some things are so completely ludicrous that a man must laugh or die. To die laughing must be the most glorious of all glorious deaths!

Beauty of whatever kind, in its supreme development, invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears.