Edgar Allan Poe Though Quotations

Man is an animal that diddles, and there is no animal that diddles but man.

It is with literature as with law or empire - an established name is an estate in tenure, or a throne in possession.

Literature is the most noble of professions. In fact, it is about the only one fit for a man.

How many good books suffer neglect through the inefficiency of their beginnings!

A poem deserves its title only inasmuch as it excites, by elevating the soul.

Science has not yet taught us if madness is or is not the sublimity of the intelligence.

The death of a beautiful woman, is unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world.

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.

Poetry is the rhythmical creation of beauty in words.

To observe attentively is to remember distinctly.

The true genius shudders at incompleteness - and usually prefers silence to saying something which is not everything it should be.

Filled with mingled cream and amber I will drain that glass again. Such hilarious visions clamber Through the chambers of my brain -- Quaintest thoughts -- queerest fancies Come to life and fade away; Who cares how time advances? I am drinking ale today.

To vilify a great man is the readiest way in which a little man can himself attain greatness.

It is the nature of truth in general, as of some ores in particular, to be richest when most superficial.

That man is not truly brave who is afraid either to seem or to be, when it suits him, a coward.

Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality.