Quotations From EDGAR ALLAN POE

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• 21.

  Man's real life is happy, chiefly because he is ever expecting that it soon will be so.

  Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1845), U.S. poet, critic, short-story writer. repr. In The Centenary Poe, ed. Montagu Slater (1949). "Re-Living the Old Life," Marginalia (1844-1849).
  
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• 22.

  As a viewed myself in a fragment of looking-glass..., I was so impressed with a sense of vague awe at my appearance ... that I was seized with a violent tremour.

  Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849), U.S. author. Pym, the narrator, in The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, ch. 8, Harper and Brothers (1838). Unnerving encounters with an alienating self.
• 23.

  He made no resistance whatever, and was stabbed in the back.... I must not dwell upon the fearful repast.... Words have no power to impress the mind with the exquisite horror of their reality.

  Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849), U.S. author. Pym, the narrator, in The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, ch. 8, Harper and Brothers (1838). The aesthetic of horror.
  
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• 24.

  If in many of my productions terror has been the thesis, I maintain that terror is not of Germany, but of the soul.

  Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849), U.S. author. Preface to the Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque (1840). Poe's most passionate and credible defense of his short stories' authenticity and originality.
• 25.

  What I here propound is true: ... if by any means it be now trodden down so that it die, it will "rise again to ... Life Everlasting."

  Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849), U.S. author. Preface, Eureka, George P. Putnam (1848). Poet as martyred prophet.
  
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• 26.

  TRUE!—nervous—very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad?

  Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849), U.S. author. The narrator, in "The Tell-Tale Heart," The Pioneer (1843). Conflicted by occulted guilt, defensiveness and pride.
• 27.

  Their hotels are bad. Their pumpkin pies are delicious. Their poetry is not so good.

  Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1845), U.S. poet, critic, short-story writer. quoted in Julian Symons, The Tell-Tale Heart: The Life and Works of Edgar Allan Poe, pt. 1, ch. 12 (1978). Broadway Journal (1845).
  
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• 28.

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

  Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849), U.S. author. "The Philosophy of Composition," Graham's Magazine (1846). Reflecting on memories of his dying mother.
  
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• 29.

  The rudiment of verse may, possibly, be found in the spondee.

  Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849), U.S. author. "The Rationale of Verse," American Review (1846). Searching for basic elements.
• 30.

  In the Original Unity of the First Thing lies the Secondary Cause of All Things, with the Germ of their Inevitable Annihilation.

  Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849), U.S. author. Eureka, George P. Putnam (1848). The thesis of the creation and the destruction of the universe.