Zitat des Tages von Edgar Allan Poe:
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.
There are few cases in which mere popularity should be considered a proper test of merit; but the case of song-writing is, I think, one of the few.
Of puns it has been said that those who most dislike them are those who are least able to utter them.
Man's real life is happy, chiefly because he is ever expecting that it soon will be so.
I have, indeed, no abhorrence of danger, except in its absolute effect - in terror.
If you wish to forget anything on the spot, make a note that this thing is to be remembered.
I am above the weakness of seeking to establish a sequence of cause and effect, between the disaster and the atrocity.
It is the nature of truth in general, as of some ores in particular, to be richest when most superficial.
All religion, my friend, is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination, and poetry.
I would define, in brief, the poetry of words as the rhythmical creation of Beauty.
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.
All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary.
The death of a beautiful woman, is unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world.
I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.
To vilify a great man is the readiest way in which a little man can himself attain greatness.
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.
Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.
They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.
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.'
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.
With me poetry has not been a purpose, but a passion.
Experience has shown, and a true philosophy will always show, that a vast, perhaps the larger portion of the truth arises from the seemingly irrelevant.
Stupidity is a talent for misconception.
The true genius shudders at incompleteness - and usually prefers silence to saying something which is not everything it should be.
The generous Critic fann'd the Poet's fire, And taught the world with reason to admire.
Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality.
The nose of a mob is its imagination. By this, at any time, it can be quietly led.
The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins?
That man is not truly brave who is afraid either to seem or to be, when it suits him, a coward.
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.
I have great faith in fools; self-confidence my friends call it.
It will be found, in fact, that the ingenious are always fanciful, and the truly imaginative never otherwise than analytic.
In criticism I will be bold, and as sternly, absolutely just with friend and foe. From this purpose nothing shall turn me.
We loved with a love that was more than love.
The rudiment of verse may, possibly, be found in the spondee.