Quote

There are certain themes of which the interest is all-absorbing, but which are too entirely horrible for the purposes of legitimate fiction.

Edgar Allan Poe

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Edgar Allan Poe
Age: 40 †
Born: 1809
Born: January 19
Died: 1849
Died: October 7
Author
Crime Writer
Essayist
Journalist
Literary Critic
Literary Theorist
Lyricist
Novelist
Playwright
Poet
Science Fiction Writer
Writer
Boston
Massachusetts
Poe
Edgar Poe
E. A. Poe
Entirely
Horrible
Fiction
Interest
Absorbing
Purpose
Themes
Certain
Legitimate
Purposes
Theme

More quotes by Edgar Allan Poe

Image
The customs of the world are so many conventional follies.
Edgar Allan Poe
Image
The goodness of your true pun is in the direct ratio of its intolerability.
Edgar Allan Poe
Image
In death - no! even in the grave all is not lost. Else there is no immortality for man. Arousing from the most profound slumbers, we break the gossamer web of some dream. Yet in a second afterward, (so frail may that web have been) we remember not that we have dreamed.
Edgar Allan Poe
Image
That man is not truly brave who is afraid either to seem or to be, when it suits him, a coward.
Edgar Allan Poe
Image
The mental features discoursed of as the analytical, are, in themselves, but little susceptible of analysis. We appreciate them only in their effects. We know of them, among other things, that they are always to their possessor, when inordinately possessed, a source of the liveliest enjoyment.
Edgar Allan Poe
Image
I might refer at once, if necessary, to a hundred well authenticated instances. One of very remarkable character, and of which the circumstances may be fresh in the memory of some of my readers, occurred, not very long ago, in the neighboring city of Baltimore, where it occasioned a painful, intense, and widely extended excitement.
Edgar Allan Poe
Image
Those who gossip with you will gossip about you.
Edgar Allan Poe
Image
Believe only half of what you see and nothing that you hear.
Edgar Allan Poe
Image
Beauty is the sole legitimate province of the poem.
Edgar Allan Poe
Image
In other words, I believed, and still do believe, that truth, is frequently of its own essence, superficial, and that, in many cases, the depth lies more in the abysses where we seek her, than in the actual situations wherein she may be found.
Edgar Allan Poe
Image
A short story must have a single mood and every sentence must build towards it.
Edgar Allan Poe
Image
Fill with mingled cream and amber, I will drain that glass again. Such hilarious visions clamber Through the chamber of my brain — Quaintest thoughts — queerest fancies Come to life and fade away What care I how time advances? I am drinking ale today.
Edgar Allan Poe
Image
There are few persons, even among the calmest thinkers, who have not occasionally been startled into a vague yet thrilling half credence in the supernatural, by coincidences of so seemingly marvellous a character that, as mere coincidences, the intellect has been unable to receive them.
Edgar Allan Poe
Image
For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams Of the beautiful Annabel Lee And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes Of the beautiful Annabel Lee And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side Of my darling- my darling- my life and my bride, In the sepulchre there by the sea, In her tomb by the sounding sea.
Edgar Allan Poe
Image
Out- out are the lights- out all! And, over each quivering form, The curtain, a funeral pall, Comes down with the rush of a storm, While the angels, all pallid and wan, Uprising, unveiling, affirm That the play is the tragedy, Man, And its hero the Conqueror Worm.
Edgar Allan Poe
Image
In the deepest slumber-no! In delirium-no! In a swoon-no! In death-no! even in the grave all is not lost.
Edgar Allan Poe
Image
And all I loved, I loved alone.
Edgar Allan Poe
Image
Yet we met and fate bound us together at the alter,and I never spoke of passion nor thought of love. She, however shunned society, and, attaching herself to me alone rendered me happy. It is a happiness to wonder it is a happiness to dream.
Edgar Allan Poe
Image
As for Republicanism, no analogy could be found for it upon the face of the earth—unless we except the case of the prairie dogs, an exception which seems to demonstrate, if anything, that democracy is a very admirable form of government—for dogs.
Edgar Allan Poe
Image
We gave him a hearty welcome, for there was nearly half as much of the entertaining as of the contemptible about the man.
Edgar Allan Poe