Remarks by Edgar Allan Poe | V2Melody Quotations

“I have no desire to live since I have done Eureka. I could accomplish nothing more.”

Feeling that his major philosophical work marked the completion of his achievement · Letter to Maria Clemm, 7 July 1849

“If you determine to abandon me — here take I my farewell — Neglected — I will be doubly ambitious, and the world shall hear of the son whom you have thought unworthy of your notice.”

Turning rejection into a vow of heightened ambition · Letter to John Allan, 22 December 1828

“I am young — not yet twenty — am a poet — if deep worship of all beauty can make me one — and wish to be so in the common meaning of the word. I would give the world to embody one half the ideas afloat in my imagination.”

Expressing youthful ambition to give form to imaginative ideas · Letter to John Neal, 1829

“He that is born to be a man, neither should nor can be anything nobler, greater, or better than a man. The fact is, that in efforts to soar above our nature, we invariably fall below it.”

Warning against attempts to transcend ordinary human nature · Marginalia

“Pure Diabolism is but Absolute Insanity. Lucifer was merely unfortunate in having been created without brains.”

Reducing absolute evil to a form of mindless insanity · Marginalia

“All that the man of genius demands for his exaltation is moral matter in motion. It makes no difference whither tends the motion — whether for him or against him.”

Asserting that genius thrives on the movement of moral forces regardless of direction · Marginalia

“I shall be a littérateur, at least, all my life; nor would I abandon the hopes which still lead me on for all the gold in California.”

Rejecting material temptation in favour of a lifelong literary vocation · Letter to Frederick W. Thomas, 14 February 1849

“I have absolutely no pleasure in the stimulants in which I sometimes so madly indulge. It has not been in the pursuit of pleasure that I have perilled life and reputation and reason.”

Explaining the use of stimulants as an escape from memory and loneliness rather than for enjoyment · Letter to Sarah Helen Whitman

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

Comparing literary reputation to inherited property or power · Letter to Mr. B—, preface to Poems, 1831

“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.”

Distinguishing poetry as the union of music and idea · Letter to Mr. B—, preface to Poems, 1831

“There neither exists nor can exist any work more thoroughly dignified — more supremely noble than this very poem — this poem per se — this poem which is a poem and nothing more — this poem written solely for the poem’s sake.”

Defending the autonomy of poetry written purely for its own sake · Essay, The Poetic Principle

“In getting my books, I have been always solicitous of an ample margin; this not so much through any love of the thing in itself, however agreeable, as for the facility it affords me of pencilling suggested thoughts.”

Explaining the practical and intellectual pleasure of annotating books · Preface to Marginalia, 1844

“To converse well, we need the cool tact of talent — to talk well, the glowing abandon of genius.”

Distinguishing the controlled skill of talent from the freer energy of genius in speech · Marginalia

“The nose of a mob is its imagination. By this, at any time, it can be quietly led.”

Observing how collective imagination governs the direction of a crowd · Marginalia

“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.”

Identifying the contemplation of beauty as the purest form of pleasure · Essay, The Poetic Principle

“A poem deserves its title only inasmuch as it excites, by elevating the soul. The value of the poem is in the ratio of this elevating excitement.”

Measuring poetic worth by the intensity and elevation of the soul’s response · Essay, The Poetic Principle

“Melancholy is thus the most legitimate of all the poetical tones.”

Linking the highest poetic effect to a tone of melancholy · Essay, The Philosophy of Composition, 1846

“I have great faith in fools — self-confidence my friends will call it.”

A wry inversion of common wisdom about self-assurance · Marginalia

“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.”

Placing the soul’s mediation at the centre of artistic creation · Marginalia

“Beauty of whatever kind, in its supreme development, invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears.”

Linking the highest beauty to an emotional response of melancholy · Essay, The Philosophy of Composition, 1846

“I would define, in brief, the Poetry of words as the Rhythmical Creation of Beauty. Its sole arbiter is Taste.”

Defining poetry purely by its capacity to create beauty rather than by truth or morality · Essay, The Poetic Principle

“The death then of a beautiful woman is unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world, and equally is it beyond doubt that the lips best suited for such topic are those of a bereaved lover.”

Stating his aesthetic principle that melancholy beauty yields the highest poetic effect · Essay, The Philosophy of Composition, 1846

“Depend upon it, after all, Thomas, Literature is the most noble of professions. In fact, it is about the only one fit for a man. For my own part, there is no seducing me from the path.”

Affirming unwavering commitment to letters despite poverty and temptation · Letter to Frederick W. Thomas, 14 February 1849

“I have no faith in human perfectability. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active — not more happy — nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago.”

Rejecting the idea of progressive human improvement across history · Letter to James Russell Lowell, 2 July 1844

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