Skip to content

I would define, in brief, the Poetry of words as the Rhythmical Creation of Beauty. Its sole arbiter is taste. With the intellect or with the conscience, it has only collateral relations. Unless incidentally, it has no concern whatever either with duty or with truth.

— Edgar Allan Poe The Poetic Principle (1850)

Another quote →

Topics

Poetry

More quotes by Edgar Allan Poe

The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins?

The Premature Burial (1844)

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.

The Raven (1844)

Years of love have been forgot
In the hatred of a minute.

A dark unfathom'd tide
Of interminable pride —
A mystery, and a dream,
Should my early life seem.

They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.

Eleonora (1841)

All Edgar Allan Poe quotes →

You may also like

There is a property in the horizon which no man has but he whose eye can integrate all the parts, that is, the poet.

Ralph Waldo Emerson Nature (1836)

Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality.

T. S. Eliot Tradition and the Individual Talent (1919)

Poetry, unlike oratory, should not aim at clarity...but be dense with meaning, 'something to be chewed and digested'.

George Chapman Ovid's Banquet of Sense (1595)

I am no poet, but if you think for yourselves, as I proceed, the facts will form a poem in your minds.

Michael Faraday

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Edgar Allan Poe (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.