Quote

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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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
Good
Wrong
Honorable
Perverse
Men
Show
Revenge
Respectability
Times
Fill
Accuse
Tell
Ambition
Pink
Shows
Perfection
Persecution
Three
Least
Altogether
Probity
Hands
Hand
Earnest
Scoundrel
Make
Four
Villain
Scoundrels

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Men die nightly in their beds, wringing the hands of ghostly confessors ... on account of the hideousness of mysteries which will not suffer themselves to be revealed.
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Most writers - poets in especial - prefer having it understood that they compose by a species of fine frenzy - an ecstatic intuition - and would positively shudder at letting the public take a peep behind the scenes.
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The generous Critic fann'd the Poet's fire, And taught the world with reason to admire.
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Decorum -- that bug-bear which deters so many from bliss until the opportunity for bliss has forever gone by.
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To him, who still would gaze upon the glory of the summer sun, there comes, when that sun will from him part, a sullen hopelessness of heart.
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The death then of a beautiful woman is unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world, and equally is it beyond doubt that the lips best suited for such topic are those of a bereaved lover.
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I wish I could write as mysterious as a cat.
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Music, when combined with a pleasurable idea, is poetry music, without the idea, is simply music the idea, without the music, is prose, from its very definitiveness.
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Many years ago, I contracted an intimacy with a Mr. William Legrand. He was of an ancient Huguenot family, and had once been wealthy but a series of misfortunes had reduced him to want.
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A short story must have a single mood and every sentence must build towards it.
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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.
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I could have clasped the red walls to my bosom as a garment of eternal peace. Death, I said, any death but that of the pit! Fool! might I have not known that into the pit it was the object of the burning iron to urge me?
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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.
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If you have never been at sea in a heavy gale, you can form no idea of the confusion of mind occasioned by wind and spry together. They blind, deafen, and strangle you, and take away all power of action or reflection.
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Believe only half of what you see and nothing that you hear.
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From a proud tower in the town, Death looks gigantically down.
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Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best have gone to their eternal rest.
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For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams of the beautiful Annabel Lee
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Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary.
Edgar Allan Poe
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Alas! for that accursed time They bore thee o'er the billow, From love to titled age and crime, And an unholy pillow! From me, and from our misty clime, Where weeps the silver willow!
Edgar Allan Poe