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
And because our reason violently deters us from the brink, therefore, do we the more impetuously approach it. There is no passion in nature so demoniacally impatient, as that of him, who shuddering upon the edge of a precipice, thus meditates a plunge. To indulge for a moment, in any attempt at thought, is to be inevitably lost; for reflection but urges us to forbear, and therefore it is, I say, that we cannot. If there be no friendly arm to check us, or if we fail in a sudden effort to prostrate ourselves backward from the abyss, we plunge, and are destroyed.
If any ambitious man have a fancy to revolutionize, at one effort, the universal world of human thought, human opinion, and human sentiment...
In efforts to soar above our nature, we invariably fall below it.
No thinking being lives who, at some luminous point of his life of thought, has not felt himself lost amid the surges of futile efforts at understanding, or believing, that anything exists greater than his own soul.
Edgar Allan Poe and Bram Stoker: A Meeting of the Macabre.
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.
I was never really insane, except on occasions where my heart was touched.
From childhood's hour I have not beenAs others were--I have not seenAs others saw.
I have great faith in fools - my friends call it self-confidence
the play was the tragedy "man" and it's hero the conqueror worm
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
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.''
Filled with mingled cream and amber I will drain that glass again. Such hilarious visions clamber Through the chambers of my brain -- Quaintest thoughts -- queerest fancies Come to life and fade away; Who cares how time advances? I am drinking ale today.
They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.