Edgar Allan Poe Quotes on Literature
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It is with literature as with law or empire - an established name is an estate in tenure, or a throne in possession.
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Beauty is the sole legitimate province of the poem.
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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.
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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!
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I have become insane with random intervals of horrible sanity.
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There comes Poe, with his Raven, like Barnaby Rudge, Three-fifths of him genius, and two-fifths sheer fudge.
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Poe is a kind of Hawthorne and delirium tremens.
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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.