Edgar Allan Poe Quotes
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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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The mere imitation, however accurate, of what is in Nature, entitles no man to the sacred name of Artist...
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Mysteries force a man to think, and so injure his health.
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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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A wrong is unredressed when retribution overtakes its redresser. It is equally unredressed when the avenger fails to make himself felt as such to him who has done the wrong.
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By late accounts from Rotterdam, that city seems to be in a high state of philosophical excitement. Indeed, phenomena have there occurred of a nature so completely unexpected--so entirely novel--so utterly at variance with preconceived opinions--as to leave no doubt on my mind that long ere this all Europe is in an uproar, all physics in a ferment, all reason and astronomy together by the ears.
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I need scarcely observe that a poem deserves its title only inasmuch as it excites, by elevating the soul. The value of the poem is in the ratio of this elevating excitement. But all excitements are, through a psychal necessity, transient.
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To be thoroughly conversant with Man’s heart, is to take our final lesson in the iron-clasped volume of Despair...
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He is, as you say, a remarkable horse, a prodigious horse, although as you very justly observe, a suspicious and untractable character.
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You need not attempt to shake off or to banter off Romance. It is an evil you will never get rid of to the end of your days. It is a part of yourself ... of your soul. Age will only mellow it a little, and give it a holier tone.
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No man who ever lived knows any more about the hereafter than you and I.
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I have not only labored solely for the benefit of others (receiving for myself a miserable pittance), but have been forced to model my thoughts at the will of men whose imbecility was evident to all but themselves...
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No thinking being lives who, at some luminous point of his life of thought, has not felt himself lost amid the surges of futile efforts at understanding, or believing, that anything exists greater than his own soul.
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For my own part, I have never had a thought which I could not set down in words, with even more distinctness than that with which I conceived it.
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I have been happy, though in a dream. I have been happy – and I love the theme: Dreams! in their vivid colouring of life As in that fleeting, shadowy, misty strife...
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And all I loved, I loved alone.
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Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing, Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortals ever dared to dream before; But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token, And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, "Lenore?" This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, "Lenore!" — Merely this, and nothing more...
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The death then of a beautiful woman is unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world, and equally is it beyond doubt that the lips best suited for such topic are those of a bereaved lover.
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Many years ago, I contracted an intimacy with a Mr. William Legrand. He was of an ancient Huguenot family, and had once been wealthy; but a series of misfortunes had reduced him to want.
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Let us dismiss, as irrelevant to the poem per se, the circumstance ... which, in the first place, gave rise to the intention of composing a poem that should suit at once the popular and the critical taste.
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...for her whom in life thou dids't abhor, in death thou shalt adore...
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After reading all that has been written, and after thinking all that can be thought, on the topics of God and the soul, the man who has a right to say that he thinks at all, will find himself face to face with the conclusion that, on these topics, the most profound thought is that which can be the least easily distinguished from the most superficial sentiment.
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Invisible things are the only realities.
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It would be mockery to call such dreariness heaven at all.