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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.

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
Long
Maintain
Poem
Terms
Exist
Phrase
Hold
Flat
Simply
Flats
Term
Contradiction
Doe
Phrases

More quotes by 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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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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All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.
Edgar Allan Poe
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I am walking like a bewitched corpse, with the certainty of being eaten by the infinite, of being annulled by the only existing Absurd.
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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Beauty is the sole legitimate province of the poem.
Edgar Allan Poe
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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.
Edgar Allan Poe
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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?
Edgar Allan Poe
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Sound loves to revel in a summer night.
Edgar Allan Poe
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Even with the utterly lost, to whom life and death are equally jests, there are matters of which no jest can be made.
Edgar Allan Poe
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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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The result of law inviolate is perfection–right–negative happiness. The result of law violate is imperfection, wrong, positive pain.
Edgar Allan Poe
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Decorum -- that bug-bear which deters so many from bliss until the opportunity for bliss has forever gone by.
Edgar Allan Poe
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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.
Edgar Allan Poe
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The analytical power should not be confounded with simple ingenuity for while the analyst is necessarily ingenious, the ingenious man is often remarkably incapable of analysis.
Edgar Allan Poe
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In [chess], where the pieces have different and bizarre motions, with various and variable values, what is only complex, is mistaken (a not unusual error) for what is profound
Edgar Allan Poe
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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.
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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The rain came down upon my head - Unshelter'd. And the wind rendered me mad and deaf and blind.
Edgar Allan Poe
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I have, indeed, no abhorrence of danger, except in its absolute effect - in terror.
Edgar Allan Poe