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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.

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
Space
Proper
Character
Tales
Great
Variety
Profusion
Mere
Incident
Development
Demanded
Novel
Incidents
Courses
Tale
Course
Construction

More quotes by Edgar Allan Poe

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Tell a scoundrel, three or four times a day, that he is the pink of probity, and you make him at least the perfection of respectability in good earnest. On the other hand, accuse an honorable man, too petinaciously, of being a villain, and you fill him with a perverse ambition to show you that you are not altogether in the wrong.
Edgar Allan Poe
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Dreams are the eraser dust I blow off my page. They fade into the emptiness, another dark gray day. Dreams are only memories of the plans I had back then. Dreams are eraser dust and now I use a pen.
Edgar Allan Poe
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Over the Mountains Of the Moon, Down the Valley of the Shadow, Ride, boldly ride, The shade replied,- If you seek for Eldorado.
Edgar Allan Poe
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The realities of the world affected me as visions, and as visions only, while the wild ideas of the land of dreams became, in turn,—not the material of my every-day existence--but in very deed that existence utterly and solely in itself.
Edgar Allan Poe
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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.
Edgar Allan Poe
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Sound loves to revel in a summer night.
Edgar Allan Poe
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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.
Edgar Allan Poe
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Ceux qui revent eveilles ont conscience de 1000 choses qui echapent a ceux qui ne revent qu'endormis. The one who has day dream are aware of 1000 things that the one who dreams only when he sleeps will never understand. (it sounds better in french, I do what I can with my translation...)
Edgar Allan Poe
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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.
Edgar Allan Poe
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My next thought concerned the choice of an impression, or effect, to be conveyed: and here I may as well observe that, throughout the construction, I kept steadily in view the design.
Edgar Allan Poe
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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
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If I could dwell where Israfel hath dwelt and he where I he might not sing so wildly well a mortal melody while a bolder note then this might swell from my lyre in the sky.
Edgar Allan Poe
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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 heartone of the indivisible primary faculties, or sentiments, which give direction to the character of Man.
Edgar Allan Poe
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Man is an animal that diddles, and there is no animal that diddles but man.
Edgar Allan Poe
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It is with literature as with law or empire - an established name is an estate in tenure, or a throne in possession.
Edgar Allan Poe
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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.
Edgar Allan Poe
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Whether people grow fat by joking, or whether there is something in fat itself which predisposes to a joke, I have never been quite able to determine.
Edgar Allan Poe
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The nose of a mob is its imagination. By this, at any time, it can be quietly led.
Edgar Allan Poe
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If we cannot comprehend God in his visible works, how then in his inconceivable thoughts, that call the works into being?
Edgar Allan Poe
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In spite of the air of fablethe public were still not at all disposed to receive it as fable. I thence concluded that the facts of my narrative would prove of such a nature as to carry with them sufficient evidence of their own authenticity.
Edgar Allan Poe