Edgar Allan Poe

If the propositions of this Discourse are tenable, the "state of progressive collapse" is precisely that state in which alone we are warranted in considering All Things.

A change fell upon all things. Strange brilliant flowers, star-shaped, burst out upon the trees where no flowers had been before. The tints of the green carpet deepened; and when, one by one, the white daisies shrank away, there sprang up, in place of them, ten by ten of the ruby-red asphodel. And life arose in our paths; for the tall flamingo hitherto unseen, with all gay glowing birds, flaunted his scarlet plumage before us. The golden and silver fish haunted the river.

No pictorial or sculptural combinations of points of human loveliness, do more than approach the living and breathing human beauty as it gladdens our daily path.

To observe attentively is to remember distinctly.

The nose of a mob is its imagination. By this, at any time, it can be quietly led.

In the marginalia ... we talk only to ourselves; we therefore talk freshly - boldly - originally - with abandonment - without conceit.

For years your name never passed my lips, while my soul drank in, with a delirious thirst, all that was uttered in my presence respecting you.

Beauty of whatever kind, in its supreme development, invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears.

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.

With me poetry has not been a purpose, but a passion.

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.

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.

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.

I felt that I breathed an atmosphere of sorrow.

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December;_x000D_ _x000D_ And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor._x000D_ _x000D_ Eagerly, I wished the morrow; - vainly I had sought to borrow_x000D_ _x000D_ From my books surcease of sorrow - sorrow for the lost Leonore -_x000D_ _x000D_ For the rare and radiant maiden who the angels name Lenore -_x000D_ _x000D_ Nameless here for evermore.

I would define, in brief, the poetry of words as the rhythmical creation of Beauty.

Blood was its Avatar and its seal.

There are few persons who have not, at some period of their lives, amused themselves in retracing the steps by which particular conclusions of their own minds have been attained. The occupation is often full of interest and he who attempts it for the first time is astonished by the apparently illimitable distance and incoherence between the starting-point and the goal.

The scariest monsters are the ones that lurk within our souls.

The mere imitation, however accurate, of what is in Nature, entitles no man to the sacred name of Artist

How many good books suffer neglect through the inefficiency of their beginnings!