Edgar Allan Poe Quotes
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Come! let the burial rite be read - the funeral song be sung! - An anthem for the queenliest dead that ever died so young - A dirge for her the doubly dead in that she died so young.
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When a madman appears thoroughly sane, indeed, it is high time to put him in a straight jacket.
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To elevate the soul, poetry is necessary.
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Helen, thy beauty is to meLike those Nicean barks of yore,That gently, o'er a perfumed sea,The weary, wayworn wanderer boreTo his own native shore.On desperate seas long wont to roam,Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,Thy Naiad airs have brought me homeTo the glory that was GreeceAnd the grandeur that was Rome.
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While the angels, all pallid and wan,Uprising, unveiling, affirmThat the play is the tragedy, 'Man',And its hero the Conqueror Worm.
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Had the routine of our life at this place been known to the world, we should have been regarded as madmen -; although, perhaps, as madmen of a harmless nature.
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And the Raven, never flitting, Still is sitting, still is sitting On the pallid bust of Pallas Just above my chamber door; And his eyes have all the seeming Of a demon's that is dreaming, And the lamplight o'er him streaming Throws his shadow on the floor, And my soul from out that shadow, That lies floating on the floor, Shall be lifted - nevermore.
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As an individual, I myself feel impelled to fancy ... a limitless succession of Universes.... Each exists, apart and independently, in the bosom of its proper and particular God.
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Hast thou not torn the Naiad from her flood,The Elfin from the green grass, and from meThe summer dream beneath the tamarind tree?
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Were the succession of stars endless, then the background of the sky would present us an uniform luminosity, like that displayed by the Galaxy-since there could be absolutely no point, in all that background, at which would not exist a star. The only mode, therefore, in which, under such a state of affairs, we could comprehend the voids which our telescopes find in innumerable directions, would be by supposing the distance of the invisible background so immense that no ray from it has yet been able to reach us at all.
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The object, Truth, or the satisfaction of the intellect, and the object, Passion, or the excitement of the heart, are, although attainable, to a certain extent, in poetry, far more readily attainable in prose.
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Depend upon it, after all, Thomas, Literature is the most noble of professions. In fact, it is about the only one fit for a man. For my own part, there is no seducing me from the path.
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It may well be doubted whether human ingenuity can construct an enigma... which human ingenuity may not, by proper application, resolve.
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In the greenest of our valleysBy good angels tenanted,Once a fair and stately palace - Radiant palace - reared its head.
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A dark unfathom'd tide Of interminable pride - A mystery, and a dream, Should my early life seem.
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Thus I pacified Psyche and kissed her,And tempted her out of her gloom.
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The unity of effect or impression is a point of the greatest importance. It is clear, moreover, that this unity cannot be thoroughly preserved in productions whose perusal cannot be completed at one sitting.
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There neither exists nor can exist any work more thoroughly dignified - more supremely noble than this very poem - this poem per se - this poem which is a poem and nothing more - this poem written solely for the poem's sake.
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Convinced myself, I seek not to convince.
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For the most wild, yet most homely narrative which I am about to pen, I neither expect nor solicit belief. Mad indeed would I be to expect it, in a case where my very senses reject their own evidence. Yet, mad am I not - and very surely do I not dream. But to-morrow I die, and to-day I would unburthen my soul.
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I have absolutely no pleasure in the stimulants in which I sometimes so madly indulge. It has not been in the pursuit of pleasure that I have periled life and reputation and reason. It has been the desperate attempt to escape from torturing memories, from a sense of insupportable loneliness and a dread of some strange impending doom.
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'Over the MountainsOf the Moon,Down the Valley of the Shadow,Ride, boldly ride,'The shade replied, - 'If you seek for Eldorado!'
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As for myself, I am simply Hop-Frog, the jester - and this is my last jest.
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The most 'popular,' the most 'successful' writers among us (for a brief period, at least) are, 99 times out of a hundred, persons of mere effrontery-in a word, busy-bodies, toadies, quacks.