Edgar Allan Poe Quotes
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The skies they were ashen and sober;The leaves they were crisped and sere - The leaves they were withering and sere;It was night in the lonesome OctoberOf my most immemorial year.
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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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O, Times! O, Manners! It is my opinion That you are changing sadly your dominion I mean the reign of manners hath long ceased, For men have none at all, or bad at least; And as for times, altho' 'tis said by many The "good old times" were far the worst of any, Of which sound Doctrine I believe each tittle Yet still I think these worst a little. I've been a thinking -isn't that the phrase?- I like your Yankee words and Yankee ways - I've been a thinking, whether it were best To Take things seriously, Or all in jest...
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Alas! for that accursed time They bore thee o'er the billow, From love to titled age and crime, And an unholy pillow! From me, and from our misty clime, Where weeps the silver willow!
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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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...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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As a poet and as a mathematician, he would reason well; as a mere mathematician, he could not have reasoned at all.
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A million candles have burned themselves out. Still I read on.
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The believer is happy. The doubter is wise.
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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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...-even with us the breath Of Science dims the mirror of our joy.
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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 we examine a work of ordinary art, by means of a powerful microscope, all traces of resemblance to nature will disappear - but the closest scrutiny of the photogenic drawing discloses only a more absolute truth, a more perfect identity of aspect with the thing represented.
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It is more than probable that I am not understood; but I fear, indeed, that it is in no manner possible to convey to the mind of the merely general reader, an adequate idea of that nervous intensity of interest with which, in my case, the powers of meditation (not to speak technically) busied and buried themselves, in the contemplation of even the most ordinary objects of the universe.
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A lie travels round the world while truth is putting her boots on.
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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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One morning, in cool blood, I slipped a noose about its neck and hung it to the limb of a tree; — hung it with the tears streaming from my eyes, and with the bitterest remorse at my heart; — hung it because I knew that it had loved me, and because I felt it had given me no reason of offence; — hung it because I knew that in so doing I was committing a sin — a deadly sin that would so jeopardize my immortal soul as to place it — if such a thing were possible — even beyond the reach of the infinite mercy of the Most Merciful and Most Terrible God.
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A short story is "a short prose narrative, requiring from a half hour, to one or two hours in its perusal...having conceived, with deliberate care, a certain unique or single effect to be wrought out.
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The world is a great ocean, upon which we encounter more tempestuous storms than calms.
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The mental features discoursed of as the analytical, are, in themselves, but little susceptible of analysis. We appreciate them only in their effects. We know of them, among other things, that they are always to their possessor, when inordinately possessed, a source of the liveliest enjoyment.
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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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The analytical power should not be confounded with simple ingenuity; for while the analyst is necessarily ingenious, the ingenious man is often remarkably incapable of analysis.
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So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating, Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door — Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door; — This it is, and nothing more.
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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.