The Tell-Tale Heart and Other Stories

by Edgar Allan Poe

It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain; but once conceived, it haunted me day and night.

And now have I not told you that what you mistake for madness is but over acuteness of the senses?—now,

But anything was better than this agony! Anything was more tolerable than this derision! I could bear those hypocritical smiles no longer!

Who has not, a hundred times, found himself committing a vile or a silly action, for no other reason than because he knows he should not? Have we not a perpetual inclination, in the teeth of our best judgment, to violate that which is Law, merely because we understand it to be such?

To observe attentively is to remember distinctly;