Edgar Allan Poe Quotes
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A wise man hears one word and understands two.
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Melancholy is ... the most legitimate of all the poetical tones.
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With me poetry has been not a purpose, but a passion; and the passions should be held in reverence: they must not they cannot at will be excited, with an eye to the paltry compensations, or the more paltry commendations, of mankind.
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Ah! what is not a dream by day To him whose eyes are cast On things around him with a ray Turned back upon the past? That holy dream- that holy dream, While all the world were chiding, Hath cheered me as a lovely beam A lonely spirit guiding. What though that light, thro' storm and night, So trembled from afar- What could there be more purely bright In Truth's day-star?
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In our endeavors to recall to memory something long forgotten, we often find ourselves upon the very verge of remembrance, without being able, in the end, to remember.
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Marking a book is literally an experience of your differences or agreements with the author. It is the highest respect you can pay him.
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We now demand the light artillery of the intellect; we need the curt, the condensed, the pointed, the readily diffused - in place of the verbose, the detailed, the voluminous, the inaccessible. On the other hand, the lightness of the artillery should not degenerate into pop-gunnery - by which term we may designate the character of the greater portion of the newspaper press - their sole legitimate object being the discussion of ephemeral matters in an ephemeral manner.
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Now this is the point. You fancy me a mad. Madmen know nothing. But you should have seen me. You should have seen how wisely I proceeded.
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In the tale proper--where there is no space for development of character or for great profusion and variety of incident--mere construction is, of course, far more imperatively demanded than in the novel.
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A fearful instance of the ill consequences attending upon irascibility - alive, with the qualifications of the dead - dead, with the propensities of the living - an anomaly on the face of the earth - being very calm, yet breathless.
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I call to mind flatness and dampness; and then all is madness - the madness of a memory which busies itself among forbidden things.
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When, indeed, men speak of Beauty, they mean, precisely, not a quality, as is supposed, but an effect - they refer, in short, just to that intense and pure elevation of soul - not of intellect, or of heart.
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Never to suffer would have been never to have been blessed.
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In the marginalia ... we talk only to ourselves; we therefore talk freshly - boldly - originally - with abandonment - without conceit.
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Even with the utterly lost, to whom life and death are equally jests, there are matters of which no jest can be made.
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Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil! - prophet still, if bird or devil! By that Heaven that bends above us- by that God we both adore- Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn, It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore- Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore." Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore.
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And much of Madness, and more of Sin, And Horror the soul of the plot.
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And then there stole into my fancy, like a rich musical note, the thought of what sweet rest there must be in the grave.
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There are few persons who have not, at some period of their lives, amused themselves in retracing the steps by which particular conclusions of their own minds have been attained. The occupation is often full of interest and he who attempts it for the first time is astonished by the apparently illimitable distance and incoherence between the starting-point and the goal.
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The realities of the world affected me as visions, and as visions only, while the wild ideas of the land of dreams became, in turn,—not the material of my every-day existence--but in very deed that existence utterly and solely in itself.
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I have no words alas! to tell the loveliness of loving well...
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Mysteries force a man to think, and so injure his health.
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Dreams are the eraser dust I blow off my page. They fade into the emptiness, another dark gray day. Dreams are only memories of the plans I had back then. Dreams are eraser dust and now I use a pen.
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The mere imitation, however accurate, of what is in Nature, entitles no man to the sacred name of Artist...