Edgar Allan Poe Quotes
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In the deepest slumber-no! In delirium-no! In a swoon-no! In death-no! even in the grave all is not lost.
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I seemed to be upon the verge of comprehension, without the power to comprehend as men, at time, find themselves upon the brink of rememberance, without being able, in the end, to remember.
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If I could dwell where Israfel hath dwelt and he where I he might not sing so wildly well a mortal melody while a bolder note then this might swell from my lyre in the sky.
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The goodness of your true pun is in the direct ratio of its intolerability.
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There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart - an unredeemed dreariness of thought which no goading of the imagination could torture into aught of the sublime...
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I am excessively slothful, and wonderfully industrious-by fits. There are epochs when any kind of mental exercise is torture, and when nothing yields me pleasure but the solitary communion with the 'mountains & the woods'-the 'altars' of Byron. I have thus rambled and dreamed away whole months, and awake, at last, to a sort of mania for composition. Then I scribble all day, and read all night, so long as the disease endures.
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Believe me, there exists no such dilemma as that in which a gentleman is placed when he is forced to reply to a blackguard.
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For years your name never passed my lips, while my soul drank in, with a delirious thirst, all that was uttered in my presence respecting you.
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The rain came down upon my head - Unshelter'd. And the wind rendered me mad and deaf and blind.
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To see distinctly the machinery--the wheels and pinions--of any work of Art is, unquestionably, of itself, a pleasure, but one which we are able to enjoy only just in proportion as we do not enjoy the legitimate effect designed by the artist.
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There was a discordant hum of human voices! There was a loud blast as of many trumpets! There was a harsh grating as of a thousand thunders! The fiery walls rushed back! An outstretched arm caught my own as I fell, fainting, into the abyss. It was that of General Lasalle. The French army had entered Toledo. The Inquisition was in the hands of its enemies.
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But in the expression of the countenance, which was beaming all over with smiles, there still lurked (incomprehensible anomalyl) that fitful strain of melancholy which will ever be found inseparable from the perfection of the beautiful.
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Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer Swung by Seraphim whose footfalls tinkled on the tufted floor. "Wretch," I cried, "thy God hath lent thee--by these angels he hath sent thee-- Respite--respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore! Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe, and forget this lost Lenore!" Quothe the Raven, "Nevermore.
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There are some secrets which do not permit themselves to be told.
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...If you do not take it up with you in some way, I shall be under the necessity of breaking your head with this shovel...
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Ah, broken is the golden bowl! the spirit flown forever! Let the bell toll!-a saintly soul floats on the Stygian river; And, Guy de Vere, hast thou no tear?-weep now or nevermore!
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Thy soul shall find itself alone ’Mid dark thoughts of the gray tombstone— Not one, of all the crowd, to pry Into thine hour of secrecy. Be silent in that solitude, Which is not loneliness—for then The spirits of the dead who stood In life before thee are again In death around thee—and their will Shall overshadow thee: be still.
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By undue profundity we perplex and enfeeble thought; and it is possible to make even Venus herself vanish from the firmament by a scrutiny too sustained, too concentrated, or too direct.
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'The best chess-player in Christendom may be little more than the best player of chess; but proficiency in whist implies capacity for success in all these more important undertakings where mind struggles with mind.'
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Deep in earth my love is lying And I must weep alone.
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Not hear it? --yes, I hear it, and have heard it. Long --long --long --many minutes, many hours, many days, have I heard it --yet I dared not --oh, pity me, miserable wretch that I am! --I dared not --I dared not speak! We have put her living in the tomb!
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There is not a more disgusting spectacle under the sun than our subserviency to British criticism. It is disgusting, first, because it is truckling, servile, pusillanimous--secondly, because of its gross irrationality. We know the British to bear us little but ill will--we know that, in no case do they utter unbiased opinions of American books . . . we know all this, and yet, day after day, submit our necks to the degrading yoke of the crudest opinion that emanates from the fatherland.
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But Psyche uplifting her finger said: Sadly this star I mistrust...
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The customs of the world are so many conventional follies.