Best quotes from The Tell-Tale Heart

And have I not told you that what you mistake for madness is but over-acuteness of the sense.

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

- Narrator

Almighty God!—no, no! They heard!—they suspected!—they knew!—they were making a mockery of my horror!—this I thought, and this I think.

True, nervous, very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am, but why will say that I am mad?! The disease had sharpened my senses, not destroyed, not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute.

And this I did for seven long nights—every night just at midnight—but I found the eye always closed; and so it was impossible to do the work; for it was not the old man who vexed me, but his Evil Eye.

I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell.

They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.

Villains!' I shrieked. 'Dissemble no more! I admit the deed! Tear up the planks! Here, here! It is the beating of his hideous heart!

If you still think me mad, you will think so no longer when I describe the wise precautions I took for the concealment of the body.