Lord, help my poor soul.
— Edgar Allan Poe
The death of a beautiful woman, is unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world.
It is the nature of truth in general, as of some ores in particular, to be richest when most superficial.
Science has not yet taught us if madness is or is not the sublimity of the intelligence.
A strong argument for the religion of Christ is this - that offences against Charity are about the only ones which men on their death-beds can be made - not to understand - but to feel - as crime.
To vilify a great man is the readiest way in which a little man can himself attain greatness.
In criticism I will be bold, and as sternly, absolutely just with friend and foe. From this purpose nothing shall turn me.
Were I called on to define, very briefly, the term Art, I should call it 'the reproduction of what the Senses perceive in Nature through the veil of the soul.' The mere imitation, however accurate, of what is in Nature, entitles no man to the sacred name of 'Artist.'
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary.
The true genius shudders at incompleteness - and usually prefers silence to saying something which is not everything it should be.
The rudiment of verse may, possibly, be found in the spondee.
In one case out of a hundred a point is excessively discussed because it is obscure; in the ninety-nine remaining it is obscure because it is excessively discussed.
I have no faith in human perfectability. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active - not more happy - nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago.
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.
The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins?
I am above the weakness of seeking to establish a sequence of cause and effect, between the disaster and the atrocity.
Of puns it has been said that those who most dislike them are those who are least able to utter them.
The generous Critic fann'd the Poet's fire, And taught the world with reason to admire.
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.
With me poetry has not been a purpose, but a passion.
That man is not truly brave who is afraid either to seem or to be, when it suits him, a coward.
Beauty of whatever kind, in its supreme development, invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears.
It is by no means an irrational fancy that, in a future existence, we shall look upon what we think our present existence, as a dream.
I would define, in brief, the poetry of words as the rhythmical creation of Beauty.
Stupidity is a talent for misconception.
All religion, my friend, is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination, and poetry.
I need scarcely observe that a poem deserves its title only inasmuch as it excites, by elevating the soul. The value of the poem is in the ratio of this elevating excitement.
I have, indeed, no abhorrence of danger, except in its absolute effect - in terror.
Experience has shown, and a true philosophy will always show, that a vast, perhaps the larger portion of the truth arises from the seemingly irrelevant.
It will be found, in fact, that the ingenious are always fanciful, and the truly imaginative never otherwise than analytic.
If you wish to forget anything on the spot, make a note that this thing is to be remembered.
Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality.
There are few cases in which mere popularity should be considered a proper test of merit; but the case of song-writing is, I think, one of the few.
The nose of a mob is its imagination. By this, at any time, it can be quietly led.
There is something in the unselfish and self-sacrificing love of a brute, which goes directly to the heart of him who has had frequent occasion to test the paltry friendship and gossamer fidelity of mere Man.
Man's real life is happy, chiefly because he is ever expecting that it soon will be so.
I have great faith in fools; self-confidence my friends call it.
We loved with a love that was more than love.
They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.
All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.
I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.
Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.
