Edgar Allan Poe quotes - page 3

I would define, in brief, the Poetry of words as the Rhythmical Creation of Beauty. Its sole arbiter is taste. With the intellect or with the conscience, it has only collateral relations. Unless incidentally, it has no concern whatever either with duty or with truth. (Edgar Allan Poe)
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. View quote
Edgar Allan Poe
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. View quote
Edgar Allan Poe
And so being young and dipped in folly, I fell in love with melancholy. View quote
Edgar Allan Poe
Music, when combined with a pleasurable idea, is poetry; music without the idea is simply music; the idea without the music is prose from its very definitiveness. View quote
Edgar Allan Poe
Thank Heaven! the crisis - The danger is past, And the lingering illness Is over at last - And the fever called "Living" Is conquered at last. View quote
Edgar Allan Poe
Few persons can be made to believe that it is not quite an easy thing to invent a method of secret writing which shall baffle investigation. Yet it may be roundly asserted that human ingenuity cannot concoct a cipher which human ingenuity cannot resolve. View quote
Edgar Allan Poe
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 than this might swell From my lyre within the sky. View quote
Edgar Allan Poe
Yes, Heaven is thine; but this Is a world of sweets and sours; Our flowers are merely-flowers. View quote
Edgar Allan Poe
Yet I am not more sure that my soul lives, than I am that perverseness is one of the primitive impulses of the human heart - one of the indivisible primary faculties, or sentiments, which give direction to the character of man. Who has not, a hundred times, found himself committing a vile or a stupid action, for no other reason than because he knows he should not? Have we not a perpetual inclination, in the teeth of our best judgement, to violate that which is Law, merely because we understand it to be such? View quote
Edgar Allan Poe
Villains!" I shrieked, "dissemble no more! I admit the deed! - tear up the planks! - here, here! - it is the beating of his hideous heart! (Edgar Allan Poe)
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. View quote
Edgar Allan Poe
It is with literature as with law or empire - an established name is an estate in tenure, or a throne in possession. View quote
Edgar Allan Poe
I was never really insane, except on occasions where my heart was touched. View quote
Edgar Allan Poe
And now have I not told you that what you mistake for madness is but overacuteness of the senses? View quote
Edgar Allan Poe
Thy Naiad airs have brought me home To the glory that was Greece And the grandeur that was Rome. View quote
Edgar Allan Poe
A dark unfathom'd tide Of interminable pride - A mystery, and a dream, Should my early life seem. View quote
Edgar Allan Poe
These fellows, knowing the extravagant gullibility of the age, set their wits to work in the imagination of improbable possibilities - of odd accidents, as they term them; but to a reflecting intellect (like mine," I added, in parenthesis, putting my forefinger unconsciously to the side of my nose,) "to a contemplative understanding such as I myself possess, it seems evident at once that the marvelous increase of late in these 'odd accidents' is by far the oddest accident of all. For my own part, I intend to believe nothing henceforward that has anything of the 'singular' about it. View quote
Edgar Allan Poe
Here once, through an alley Titanic, Of cypress, I roamed with my Soul - Of cypress, with Psyche, my Soul. View quote
Edgar Allan Poe
If a poem hasn't ripped apart your soul; you haven't experienced poetry. View quote
Edgar Allan Poe
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary. (Edgar Allan Poe)
That pleasure which is at once the most pure, the most elevating and the most intense, is derived, I maintain, from the contemplation of the beautiful. View quote
Edgar Allan Poe
To vilify a great man is the readiest way in which a little man can himself attain greatness. View quote
Edgar Allan Poe
Poetry is the rhythmical creation of beauty in words. View quote
Edgar Allan Poe
The ninety and nine are with dreams, content but the hope of the world made new, is the hundredth man who is grimly bent on making those dreams come true. View quote
Edgar Allan Poe