Edgar Allan Poe
Poet
1809-01-19 – 1849-10-07
Edgar Allan Poe was an American writer, poet, editor, and literary critic known for his tales of mystery and the macabre. Born in Boston on 1809-01-19, he became a foundational figure in short fiction, detective fiction, and Gothic literature. He died in Baltimore on 1849-10-07.
Books by Edgar Allan Poe
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The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe
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The Masque of the Red Death
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Quotes by Edgar Allan Poe
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So resolute is the world to despise anything which carries with it an air of simplicity.
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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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You will observe that the stories told are all about money-seekers, not about money-finders.
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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?
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I do believe God gave me a spark of genius, but he quenched it in misery.
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I have absolutely no pleasure in the stimulants in which I sometimes so madly indulge. It has not been in the pursuit of pleasure that I have periled life and reputation and reason. It has been the desperate attempt to escape from torturing memories, from a sense of insupportable loneliness and a dread of some strange impending doom.
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In the strange anomaly of my existence, feelings with me had never been of the heart, and my passions always were of the mind.
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Men have called me mad; but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence.
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And have I not told you that what you mistake for madness is but over-acuteness of the sense?
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I AM come of a race noted for vigor of fancy and ardor of passion. Men have called me mad; but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence--whether much that is glorious--whether all that is profound--does not spring from disease of thought--from moods of mind exalted at the expense of the general intellect. They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night. In their gray visions they obtain glimpses of eternity, and thrill, in waking, to find that they have been upon the verge of the great secret. In snatches, they learn something of the wisdom which is of good, and more of the mere knowledge which is of evil. They penetrate, however, rudderless or compassless into the vast ocean of the light ineffable, and again, like the adventures of the Nubian geographer, agressi sunt mare tenebrarum, quid in eo esset exploraturi.We will say then, that I am mad.
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Men have called me mad; but the question is not settled whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence -- whether much that is glorious -- whether all that is profound -- does not spring from disease of thought -- from moods of mind exalted at the expense of the general intellect. They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who only dream by night. In their gray visions they obtain glimpses of eternity, and thrill, in waking, to find that they have been upon the verge of the great secret. In snatches, they learn something of the wisdom which is of good, and more of the mere knowledge which is of evil. They penetrate, however rudderless or compassless, into the vast ocean of the —light ineffable'.
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Men have called me mad; but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence– whether much that is glorious– whether all that is profound– does not spring from disease of thought– from moods of mind exalted at the expense of the general intellect.
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I intend to put up with nothing that I can put
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And thus when by Poetry, or when by Music, the most entrancing of the poetic moods, we find ourselves melted into tears, we weep then, not... through excess of pleasure, but through a certain petulant, impatient sorrow at our inability to grasp now, wholly, here on earth, at once and forever, those divine and raptorous joys of which through the poem, or through the music, we attain to but brief and indeterminate glimpses.
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A feeling, for which I have no name, has taken possession of my soul.
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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.
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When, indeed, men speak of Beauty, they mean, precisely, not a quality, as is supposed, but an effect - they refer, in short, just to that intense and pure elevation of soul - not of intellect, or of heart.
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In beauty of face no maiden ever equaled her. It was the radiance of an opium-dream - an airy and spirit-lifting vision more wildly divine than the fantasies which hovered about the slumbering souls of the daughters of Delos.
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Yet mad I am not...and very surely do I not dream.
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Take this kiss upon the brow!And, in parting from you now,Thus much let me avow-You are not wrong, who deemThat my days have been a dream;Yet if hope has flown awayIn a night, or in a day,In a vision, or in
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