Edgar Allan Poe: The Complete Collection

by Edgar Allan Poe

In point of natural beauty, as well as of convenience, the harbor of New-York has scarcely its equal in the northern hemisphere; but, as in the case of Brooklyn, the Gothamites have most grievously disfigured it by displays of landscape and architectural taste.

The dogmatic bow-wow of this man is the most amusing thing imaginable. I do believe that out of every ten matters which he gives to the public as fact, eight, at least, are

downright lies, while the other two may be classed either as “doubtful” or “rigmarole.”

The history of human knowledge has so uniformly shown that to collateral, or incidental, or accidental events, we are indebted for the most numerous and most valuable discoveries, that it has, at length, become necessary, in any prospective view of improvements, to make not only large, but the largest allowances for inventions that shall arise by chance—out

There is not a word of censure from beginning to end. This is doing injustice not only to the public, but to Mr. Willis, who is more really injured by puffery than by censure, even if severe.

All the stuff in poetry and prose about quiet being necessary to sleep, you can practically deny. Monotony, not quiet, is the thing to put one to sleep. It is the quiet which wakes you up when the coach stops.

This is why i put on a fan when i am going to bed.

The cabman, notwithstanding his wealth, dresses as if he is poor. His parsimony is further evinced in his manner, which seems to indicate that he does not get enough for his work.

Cats are modest. They make no show of accomplishments. You never hear of a learned cat. Learned pigs, bears and dogs,

(We apply the feminine gender and pronoun to

cats, because all cats are she; in the same way that all sluts and mares are called he, a peculiar beauty of the English language.)

That the imagination has not been unjustly ranked as supreme among the mental faculties, appears from the intense consciousness, on the part of the imaginative man, that the faculty in question brings his soul often to a glimpse of things supernal and eternal—to the very verge of the great secrets.

Some of the most profound knowledge—perhaps all very profound knowledge—has originated from a highly stimulated imagination. Great intellects guess well. The laws of Kepler were, professedly, guesses.

Most authors sit down to write with no fixed design, trusting to the inspiration of the moment; it is not, therefore, to be wondered at, that most books are valueless. Pen should never touch paper, until at least a well-digested general purpose be established.

In fiction, the denouement—in all other composition the intended effect, should be definitely considered and arranged, before writing the first word; and no word should be then written which does not tend, or form a part of a sentence which tends to the development of the denouement, or to the strengthening of the effect.

I love this.

Their littleness is measured by the greatness of those whom they have reviled.

MARGINALIA.

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 penciling suggested thoughts, agreements, and differences of opinion, or brief critical comments in general.

Where what I have to note is too much to be included within the narrow limits of a margin, I commit it to a slip of paper, and deposit it between the leaves; taking care to secure it by an imperceptible portion of gum tragacanth paste.

All this may be whim; it may be not only a very hackneyed, but a very idle practice;—yet I persist in it sti...

This making of notes, however, is by no means the making ...

in fact, if you wish to forget anything on the spot, make a note that this thing is to be remembered.

the purely marginal jottings, done with no eye to the Memorandum Book, have a distinct complexion, and not only a distinct purpose, but none at all; this it is which imparts to them a value.

In the marginalia, too, we talk only to ourselves; we therefore talk freshly—boldly—originally—with abandonnement—without conceit—much

Had the Post been only half as honest as ignorant, it would have owned that it disbelieved for no reason more profound than that which influences all dunces in disbelieving—it

would have owned that it doubted the thing merely because the thing was a “wonderful” thing, and had never yet been printed in a book.

The writer who neglects punctuation, or mis-punctuates, is liable to be misunderstood—this, according to the popular idea, is the sum of the evils arising from heedlessness or ignorance.

An infinity of error makes its way into our Philosophy, through Man’s habit of considering himself a citizen of a world solely—of an individual planet—instead of at least occasionally contemplating his position as cosmopolite proper—as a denizen of the universe.

Some Frenchman—possibly Montaigne—says: “People talk about thinking, but for my part I never think, except when I sit down to write.”

“This is right,” says Epicurus, “precisely because the people are displeased with it.”

The Germans have not yet passed this first epoch. It must be remembered that during the whole of the middle ages they lived in utter ignorance of the art of writing.

Is this true?

What can be more soothing, at once to a man’s Pride and to his Conscience, than the conviction that, in taking vengeance on his enemies for in

justice done him, he has simply to do them justice in return?

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

Whenever a book is abused, people take it for granted that it is I who have been abusing it.

the range of Imagination is unlimited.

It has been well said of the French orator, Dupin, that “he spoke, as nobody else, the language of everybody;”

As a novelist, then, Bulwer is far more than respectable; although generally inferior to Scott, Godwin, D’Israeli, Miss Burney, Sue, Dumas, Dickens, the author of “Ellen Wareham,” and the author of “Jane Eyre,” and several others.

“The men of sense,” says Helvetius, “those idols of the unthinking, are very far inferior to the men of passions. It is the strong passions which, rescuing us from sloth, can alone impart to us that continuous and earnest attention necessary to great intellectual efforts.”

Urged by a rabid ambition to do much, in doing nothing he would merely have proved himself an idiot.

His works bear about them the unmistakeable indications of mere talent—talent, I grant, of an unusual order and nurtured to its extreme of development with a very tender and elaborate care. Nevertheless, it is talent still. Genius it is not.

to speak of a poet without genius, is merely to put forth a flat contradiction in terms.

They seem to begin their stories without knowing how they are to end; and their ends, generally,—like so many governments of Trinculo—appear

appear to have forgotten their beginnings. 

All that the man of genius demands for his exaltation is moral matter in motion.

The partial genius is flashy—scrappy. The true genius shudders at incompleteness—imperfection—and usually prefers silence to saying the something which is not everything that should be said.

And yet, if denied mouth, some persons whom I have in my eye would contrive to chatter on still—as they do now—through the nose.

Bulwer is not the man to look a stern fact in the face. He would rather sentamentalize upon a vulgar although picturesque error.

In my reply to the letter signed “Outis,” and defending Mr. Longfellow from certain charges supposed to have been made against him by myself, I took occasion to assert that “of the class of willful plagiarists nine out of ten are authors of established reputation who plunder recondite, neglected, or forgotten books.”

mine. Apparent plagiarisms frequently arise from an author’s self repetition. He finds that something he has already published has fallen dead—been overlooked—or that it is peculiarly àpropos to another subject now under discussion. He therefore introduces the passage; often without allusion to his having printed it before;

whenever there is a question as to who is the original and who the plagiarist, the point may be determined, almost invariably, by observing which passage is amplified, or exaggerated, in tone.