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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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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
Books
Reading
Others
Perusing
Book
Chiefly
Exclusively
Occupy
Author
Thoughts

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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The mere imitation, however accurate, of what is in Nature, entitles no man to the sacred name of Artist
Edgar Allan Poe
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The world is a great ocean, upon which we encounter more tempestuous storms than calms.
Edgar Allan Poe
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...And, all at once, the moon arouse through the thin ghastly mist, And was crimson in color... And they lynx which dwelleth forever in the tomb, came out therefrom. And lay down at the feet of the demon. And looked at him steadily in the face.
Edgar Allan Poe
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That pleasure which is at once the most pure, the most elevating and the most intense, is derived, I maintain, from the contemplation of the beautiful.
Edgar Allan Poe
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And so, being young and dipt in folly, I fell in love with melancholy.
Edgar Allan Poe
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It is clear that a poem may be improperly brief. Undue brevity degenerates into mere epigrammatism. A very short poem, while now and then producing a brilliant or vivid, never produces a profound or enduring, effect. There must be the steady pressing down of the stamp upon the wax.
Edgar Allan Poe
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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.
Edgar Allan Poe
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It is the nature of truth in general, as of some ores in particular, to be richest when most superficial.
Edgar Allan Poe
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The plots of God are perfect. The Universe is a plot of God.
Edgar Allan Poe
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Were I called on to define, very briefly, the term Art, I should call it 'the reproduction of what the Senses perceive in Nature through the veil of the soul.' The mere imitation, however accurate, of what is in Nature, entitles no man to the sacred name of 'Artist.'
Edgar Allan Poe
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By a route obscure and lonely Haunted by ill angels only, Where an eidolon, named NIGHT, On a black throne reigns upright, I have reached these lands but newly From an ultimate dim Thule -- From a wild, weird clime that lieth, sublime, Out of SPACE, out of TIME.
Edgar Allan Poe
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Blood was its Avatar and its seal.
Edgar Allan Poe
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Scorching my seared heart with a pain, not hell shall make me fear again.
Edgar Allan Poe
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That single thought is enough. The impulse increases to a wish, the wish to a desire, the desire to an uncontrollable longing, and the longing (to the deep regret and mortification of the speaker, and in defiance of all consequences,) is indulged.
Edgar Allan Poe
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The people have nothing to do with the laws but to obey them.
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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With me poetry has been not a purpose, but a passion and the passions should be held in reverence: they must not they cannot at will be excited, with an eye to the paltry compensations, or the more paltry commendations, of mankind.
Edgar Allan Poe
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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.
Edgar Allan Poe
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Me volví loco, con largos intervalos de horrible cordura.
Edgar Allan Poe