8 Edgar Allan Poe Quotes on Literature

Edgar Allan Poe quotes on literature

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

34. Beauty is the sole legitimate province of the poem.

38. 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.

58. One night, returning home, much intoxicated, from one of my haunts about town, I fancied that the cat avoided my presence. I seized him; when, in his fright at my violence, he inflicted a slight wound upon my hand with his teeth. The fury of a demon instantly possessed me. I knew myself no longer. My original soul seemed, at once, to take its flight from my body; and a more than fiendish malevolence, gin-nurtured, thrilled every fiber of my frame. I took from my waistcoat-pocket a penknife, opened it, grasped the poor beast by the throat, and deliberately cut one of its eyes from the socket!

98. I have become insane with random intervals of horrible sanity.

101. There comes Poe, with his Raven, like Barnaby Rudge, Three-fifths of him genius, and two-fifths sheer fudge.

102. Poe is a kind of Hawthorne and delirium tremens.

     Attribution disputed; shown as originally published.

103. Poe...was perhaps the first great nonstop literary drinker of the American nineteenth century. He made the indulgences of Coleridge and De Quincy seem like a bit of mischief in the kitchen with the cooking sherry.