Quote

There are two bodies - the rudimental and the complete corresponding with the two conditions of the worm and the butterfly. What we call death, is but the painful metamorphosis. Our present incarnation is progressive, preparatory, temporary. Our future is perfected, ultimate, immortal. The ultimate life is the full design.

Edgar Allan Poe

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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
Bodies
Worm
Call
Complete
Corresponding
Future
Painful
Incarnation
Death
Worms
Two
Ultimate
Butterfly
Body
Design
Progressive
Preparatory
Life
Conditions
Temporary
Perfected
Present
Immortal
Metamorphosis
Full

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The ninety and nine are with dreams, content but the hope of the world made new, is the hundredth man who is grimly bent on making those dreams come true.
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But our love was stronger by far than the love Of those who were older than we Of many far wiser than we And neither the angels in heaven above, Nor the demons down under the sea, Can ever dissever my soul from the soul Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.
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Odors have an altogether peculiar force, in affecting us through association a force differing essentially from that of objects addressing the touch, the taste, the sight or the hearing.
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It is by no means an irrational fancy that, in a future existence, we shall look upon what we think our present existence, as a dream.
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In the deepest slumber-no! In delirium-no! In a swoon-no! In death-no! even in the grave all is not lost.
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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.
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Villains!' I shrieked. 'Dissemble no more! I admit the deed! Tear up the planks! Here, here! It is the beating of his hideous heart!
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In reading some books we occupy ourselves chiefly with the thoughts of the author in perusing others, exclusively with our own.
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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.
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Beauty is the sole legitimate province of the poem.
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In the tale proper--where there is no space for development of character or for great profusion and variety of incident--mere construction is, of course, far more imperatively demanded than in the novel.
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Deep in earth my love is lying And I must weep alone.
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All religion, my friend, is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination, and poetry.
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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.
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Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor. Eagerly, I wished the morrow - vainly I had sought to borrow From my books surcease of sorrow - sorrow for the lost Leonore - For the rare and radiant maiden who the angels name Lenore - Nameless here for evermore.
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The past is a pebble in my shoe.
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There might be a class of beings, human once, but now to humanity invisible, for whose scrutiny, and for whose refined appreciation of the beautiful, more especially than for our own, had been set in order by God the great landscape-garden of the whole earth.
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...for her whom in life thou dids't abhor, in death thou shalt adore
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The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins?
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