Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poewas an American writer, editor, and literary critic. Poe is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and the macabre. He is widely regarded as a central figure of Romanticism in the United States and American literature as a whole, and he was one of the country's earliest practitioners of the short story. Poe is generally considered the inventor of the detective fiction genre and is further credited with contributing to the...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth19 January 1809
CityBoston, MA
CountryUnited States of America
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.
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.
In efforts to soar above our nature, we invariably fall below it.
I hold that a long poem does not exist. I maintain that the phrase, "a long poem," is simply a flat contradiction in terms.
the truth is, I am heartily sick of this life & of the nineteenth century in general. (I am convinced that every thing is going wrong.)
Marking a book is literally an experience of your differences or agreements with the author. It is the highest respect you can pay him.
As a poet and as a mathematician, he would reason well; as a mere mathematician, he could not have reasoned at all.
You call it hope-that fire of fire! It is but agony of desire.
Whether people grow fat by joking, or whether there is something in fat itself which predisposes to a joke, I have never been quite able to determine...
In reading some books we occupy ourselves chiefly with the thoughts of the author; in perusing others, exclusively with our own.
Sensations are the great things, after all. Should you ever be drowned or hung, be sure and make a note of your sensations; they will be worth to you ten guineas a sheet.
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 silly action, for no other reason than because he knows he should not? Have we not a perpetual inclination, in the teeth of our best judgment, to violate that which is Law, merely because we understand it to be such?
...for the question is of will, and not, as the insanity of logic has assumed of power. It is not that the Deity cannot modify his laws, but that we insult him in imagining a possible necessity for modification. In their origin these laws were fashioned to embrace all contingencies which could lie in the future. With God all is Now.
To him, who still would gaze upon the glory of the summer sun, there comes, when that sun will from him part, a sullen hopelessness of heart.