Edgar Allan Poe Quotes

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It is clear that a poem may be improperly brief. Undue brevity degenerates into mere epigrammatism. A very short poem, while now and then producing a brilliant or vivid, never produces a profound or enduring, effect. There must be the steady pressing down of the stamp upon the wax.

Edgar Allan Poe
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.

Edgar Allan Poe
There are two bodies - the rudimental and the complete; corresponding with the two conditions of the worm and the butterfly. What we call "death," is but the painful metamorphosis. Our present incarnation is progressive, preparatory, temporary. Our future is perfected, ultimate, immortal. The ultimate life is the full design.

Edgar Allan Poe
The greater amount of truth is impulsively uttered; thus the greater amount is spoken, not written.

Edgar Allan Poe
Tell a scoundrel, three or four times a day, that he is the pink of probity, and you make him at least the perfection of "respectability" in good earnest. On the other hand, accuse an honorable man, too petinaciously, of being a villain, and you fill him with a perverse ambition to show you that you are not altogether in the wrong.

Edgar Allan Poe
There might be a class of beings, human once, but now to humanity invisible, for whose scrutiny, and for whose refined appreciation of the beautiful, more especially than for our own, had been set in order by God the great landscape-garden of the whole earth.

Edgar Allan Poe
I have before suggested that a genuine blackguard is never without a pocket-handkerchief.

Edgar Allan Poe
It is better to be a good deal prolix than even a very little obscure.

Edgar Allan Poe
Is there — is there balm in Gilead? — tell me — tell me, I implore!

Edgar Allan Poe
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.

Edgar Allan Poe
The great problem is at length solved! The air, as well as the earth and the ocean, has been subdued by science, and will become a common and convenient highway for mankind.

Edgar Allan Poe
I am actuated by an ambition which I believe to be an honourable one — the ambition of serving the great cause of truth, while endeavouring to forward the literature of the country.

Edgar Allan Poe
To speak algebraically - Mr. M. is execrable, but Mr. C. is x plus 1-ecrable.

Edgar Allan Poe
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.

Edgar Allan Poe
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.

Edgar Allan Poe
Children are never too tender to be whipped. Like tough beefsteaks, the more you beat them, the more tender they become.

Edgar Allan Poe
I shall always know what to answer, and my reply will be imposed upon me by the witness of my senses.

Edgar Allan Poe
The word "Verse" is used here as the term most convenient for expressing, and without pedantry, all that is involved in the consideration of rhythm, rhyme, meter, and versification... the subject is exceedingly simple; one tenth of it, possibly, may be called ethical; nine tenths, however, appertains to the mathematics.

Edgar Allan Poe
Scorching my seared heart with a pain, not hell shall make me fear again.

Edgar Allan Poe
The eye, like a shattered mirror, multiplies the images of sorrow

Edgar Allan Poe
There are some qualities, some incorporate things, that have a double life, which thus is made. A type os twin entity which springs from matter and light, envinced in solid and shade.

Edgar Allan Poe
Science! true daughter of old Time thou art Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes! Why prey'st thou thus upon the poet's heart, Vulture! whose wings are dull realities!

Edgar Allan Poe
If you have never been at sea in a heavy gale, you can form no idea of the confusion of mind occasioned by wind and spry together. They blind, deafen, and strangle you, and take away all power of action or reflection.

Edgar Allan Poe
Men of genius are far more abundant than is supposed. In fact, to appreciate thoroughly the work of what we call genius, is to possess all the genius by which the work was produced.

Edgar Allan Poe
By the grey woods, by the swamp, where the toad and newt encamp, by the dismal tarns and pools, where dwell the Gouls. By each spot the most unholy, by each nook most melancholy, there the traveller meets, aghast, sheeted memories of the Past. Shrouded forms that start and sigh, as they pass the wanderer by. White-robed forms of friends long given; In agony, to the Earth - and Heaven.

Edgar Allan Poe