E. T. A. Hoffmann

“ Mademoiselle Scuderi shuddered at this grizly notion. It seemed to her that no truth or virtue could endure before this terrible man; as if he spied out murder and bloodguilt in the deepest and most hidden thoughts of people's hearts. She rose. "Be human!" was all that in her state of anxiety and oppression she was able, with difficulty, to say. As she was just going to descend the stairs, to which the President had attended her with ceremonious courtesy, a strange idea came to her--she knew not how. "Might I be allowed to see this unfortunate Olivier Brusson?" ”

“ Am I a dead man?"
"Do not excite yourself, Signor Pasquale," said Antonio.
"As you bore the first application of the bandages so well, and did not fall into a faint, I hope all danger is over; but the most careful nursing is absolutely essential. The most important point is that the surgeon must not let you be out of his sight for a moment."
"Ah, Antonio!" whined the old gentleman, "you know how fond I am of you--what a high opinion I have of your talent! Don't leave me--give me your dear hand! That is it! My dear, good son, you won't go away from me, will you?" ”

“ The unfathomable element in woman's nature mockingly sets all the weapons of our sex at complete defiance. She whom we believe to have devoted herself to us with her whole being--to have opened to us the innermost recesses of her nature--is the first to deceive us, and with the sweetest kisses we imbibe the most destroying poison."
"And my Marianna?" asked Antonio, aghast.
"Pardon me, Antonio," answered Salvator; "even your Marianna, who is sweetness and delightsomeness personified, has given me a fresh proof how constantly we are menaced by the mysterious nature of woman. ”

“ Is it you, Signor Salvator? Your room upstairs, looking upon the courtyard, is empty still, and the old fig-tree has stretched its leaves and branches right into the window, so that you can sit and work as if you were in a beautiful cool arbour. Ah! how delighted my girls will be that you are here again, Signor Salvator. But I must tell you Margerita has grown a big girl, and a very pretty girl--it won't do to take her on your knee now! Your cat, only fancy, died three months ago--a fish bone stuck in its throat. Aye, aye, poor thing! the grave is the common lot. ”

“ Euchar took Ludwig by the arm, led him a step or two across the street, and said, "You shall hear all about everything in good time, dear friend; but, to begin with, how have things been going with you? You are terribly pale--the fire of your eyes has gone out. To tell you the honest truth, you look about ten years older than when I saw you last. Have you been having a bad illness or some serious trouble?"
"Oh, dear no!" answered Ludwig. "Quite the contrary. I believe I am the very happiest fellow under the sun, for I am living a life of utterly ideal, Utopian love and bliss. ”

“ We are comrades of yours; we are love-devils; and we have come to carry you down to the hottest hell, you and your bosom-friend there, Pitichinaccio!" Thus screaming, the devils fell upon Capuzzi, and he, with Pitichinaccio, went down, both of them raising piercing yells of distress like those of a whole herd of beaten donkeys.
Marianna had forcibly torn herself away from the old fellow, and sprung to one side, where one of the devils folded her softly in his arms, and said, in a sweet voice of affection: "Oh, Marianna! my own Marianna! it has all come right at last. ”

“ I am innocent of bloodguilt. No torture will draw from me the secret of Cardillac's iniquities. Not through any action of mine shall that Eternal Power, which hid from Madelon the gruesome bloodguilt of her father all this time, break in upon her now, to her destruction, nor shall earthly vengeance drag the corpse of Cardillac out of the soil which covers it, and brand the mouldering bones with infamy. No; the beloved of my soul shall mourn me as an innocent victim. Time will mitigate her sorrow for me, but her grief for her father's terrible crimes nothing would ever assuage. ”

“ But the door opened, and a girl in a white night dress, with her hair undone, and death in her face, rushed up to old Vertua, raised him, took him in her arms, and cried, 'Oh, father, I have heard it all--I know it all! Have you lost everything?--everything? You have still your Angela. What would be the use of money if you had not Angela to take care of you. Oh, father! don't humiliate yourself more before this despicable, inhuman creature. It is not we, it is he who is poor and miserable in all his despicable riches, for he stands there in the most gruesome, comfortless loneliness. ”

“ Why should not a writer be permitted to make use of the levers of fear, terror, and horror because some feeble soul here and there finds it more than it can bear? Shall there be no strong meat at table because there happen to be some guests there whose stomachs are weak, or who have spoiled their own digestions?"
"My dear, fanciful Cyprian," Theodore said, "there was no occasion for your vindication of the horrible. We all know how wonderfully great writers have moved men's hearts to their very depths by means of that lever. We have only to think of Shakespeare. ”

“ Examine your own heart. It is not yet too late. May the remembrance of him whom you have forgotten never fall across your heart like some black shadow."
"Never," cried Angelica, while the tears ran down her cheeks, "never can I forget Moritz. Never; oh! never can I love as I loved him! What I feel for the Count is something totally different. I cannot explain how it is that the Count has made me feel this irresistible attachment to him; but feel it I do, in every fibre of my being. It is not that I love him: I do not; I cannot love him in the way I loved Moritz ”

“ At this moment Don Rafaele in a state of the most wild excitement darted forward with cries of "My child, my sweet child!" and was in the act to clasp the young creature, who did not seem to be more than about eight or ten in years, in his arms, when, suddenly seeing the bright torchlight shining on Edgar's face, he threw himself at his feet, crying, "Oh Don Edgar, Don Edgar! this knee has never bent to mortal man till now; but you are no mortal--you are an angel of light sent to save me from deadly anxiety and inconsolable despair! ”

“ But Salvator hurried up to him, took him by both hands, and cried out: "My dear Signor Pasquale! how highly honoured I am that you should visit me in my humble lodging. Doubtless it is the love of art that brings you. You wish to look at what I have been doing lately; perhaps you are even going to honour me with a commission. Tell me, dear Signor Pasquale, wherein I can do you a pleasure."
"I have to speak with you," stammered Capuzzi, with difficulty, "dear Signor Salvator; but, alone; when you are by yourself. ”

“ He took Salvator's hand, and whispered gently: "My dear Signor Salvator, you can do anything with the good Antonio. Beg him, in my name, to allow me to spend the brief remainder of my days with him and my dear daughter Marianna, and to accept from me the fortune which she inherits from her mother, to which I mean to add a liberal marriage-portion. And then, too, he mustn't look askew if I now and then kiss the lovely child's little white hand; and--at all events on Sundays when I go to mass--he must dress my moustache for me; a thing which nobody in all the world can do as he can." ”

“ Then Manasseh clenched his fists at the fainting Commissionsrath, and cried, with rage and hatred blazing in his face--
"Ha! Melchior Bosswinkel! thou hast conspired against me. Thou art in league with this accursed sorcerer, whom thou hast brought into thine house. But cursed, cursed shalt thou be. Thou and all thy race shall be swept away like the helpless brood of a bird. The grass shall grow on thy doorstep, and all that thou settest thy hand to shall be as the dream of the famishing, who sates himself, in dreams, with savoury food. ”

“ After I have emptied this glass of punch and duly lauded Theodore's art of preparing that liquid after its mystic proportions, and due relations of the hot, strong and sweet, I will simply point out that there is a certain amount of insanity, a certain dose of crackiness, so deeply rooted in human nature, that there is no better mode of getting at the knowledge of it than by carefully studying it in those madmen and eccentrics whom we by no means have to go to madhouses to come across, but whom we may meet with every hour of the day in our daily course ”

“ Dagobert cried. "Nothing is so utterly delightful in young ladies as their being tremendously superstitious, and easily frightened; and I should never dream of marrying a woman who was not terribly afraid of ghosts."
"You were saying a little while ago, dear Dagobert," said Moritz, "that we ought to guard ourselves against--or take care how we allow ourselves to get into--that dreamy state of awe which is the commencement of spirit-fear--the dread of the superhuman, the ghostly world. You have still got to explain to us the why." ”

“ My heart throbbed with rapture and delight. It was as if friendly spirits were coming to me, wafted on the wings of the wind, speaking to me in lovely voices of comfort, as if a newly-won life was stretching out hands to me to lift me from the coffin in which some hostile power had nailed me up. One or two horsemen came up with lightning speed, right into the castle enclosure. I looked down, and saw Bogislav. In the excess of my joy I shouted out his name; the Chevalier came in, pale and annoyed, stammering out something about an unexpected billeting, and all sorts of trouble and annoyance. ”

“ At times it seemed to me that I had rendered myself Cardillac's accomplice in murder, and it was only in Madelon's love that I forgot for a time the inward pain which tortured me; only in her society could I drive away all outward traces of the nameless horror. When I was at work with the old man in the workshop, I could not look him in the face--could scarcely speak a word--for the horror which pervaded me in the presence of this terrible being, who fulfilled all the duties of the tender father and the good citizen, while the night shrouded his atrocities. ”

“ I will not have any human being, least of all Madelon and you, come into possession of those blood-bought stones.'
"Shut up in this labyrinth of crime, torn in twain by love and abhorrence, I was like one of the damned to whom a glorified angel points, with gentle smile, the upward way, whilst Satan holds him down with red-hot talons, and the angel's loving smile, reflecting all the bliss of paradise, becomes, to him, the very keenest of his tortures. I thought of flight, even of suicide, but Madelon! ”