Quote

It is the curse of a certain order of mind, that it can never rest satisfied with the consciousness of its ability to do a thing.Still less is it content with doing it. It must both know and show how it was done.

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
Must
Show
Thing
Shows
Curse
Mind
Order
Content
Never
Stills
Satisfied
Certain
Consciousness
Still
Rest
Reason
Ability
Done
Less

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A short story must have a single mood and every sentence must build towards it.
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The result of law inviolate is perfection–right–negative happiness. The result of law violate is imperfection, wrong, positive pain.
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And much of Madness, and more of Sin, And Horror the soul of the plot.
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Every moment of the night Forever changing places And they put out the star-light With the breath from their pale faces
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A gentleman with a pug nose is a contradiction in terms.
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The enormous multiplication of books in every branch of knowledge is one of the greatest evils of this age, since it presents one of the most serious obstacles to the acquisition of correct information by throwing in the reader's way piles of lumber in which he must painfully grope for the scraps of useful matter, peradventure interspersed.
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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.
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Let us dismiss, as irrelevant to the poem per se, the circumstance ... which, in the first place, gave rise to the intention of composing a poem that should suit at once the popular and the critical taste.
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Ah, broken is the golden bowl! the spirit flown forever! Let the bell toll!-a saintly soul floats on the Stygian river And, Guy de Vere, hast thou no tear?-weep now or nevermore!
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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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The plots of God are perfect. The Universe is a plot of God.
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I found him well educated, with unusual powers of mind, but infected with misanthropy, and subject to perverse moods of alternate enthusiasm and melancholy.
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Those who gossip with you will gossip about you.
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And I fell violently on my face.
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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.
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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.
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It would be mockery to call such dreariness heaven at all.
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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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There are chords in the hearts of the most reckless which cannot be touched without emotion.
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I hold that a long poem does not exist. I maintain that the phrase, a long poem, is simply a flat contradiction in terms.
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