Edgar Allan Poe idézet

oldal 3

„Minden, amit látunk, vagy aminek látszunk, egyszerűen csak egy álom az álomban.”

„Ha egy vers nem tépte szét a lelkedet, még nem tapasztaltál meg igazi költészetet.”

„Megőrültem, hosszú időközönként szörnyű józansággal.”

„Soha nem voltam igazán őrült, kivéve azokat az alkalmakat, amikor megérintették a szívemet.”

„Alvás. A halálnak azok a kis szeletei. Mennyire utálom őket.”

„Nos, az emberi ismeretek fejlődésének története szinte szakadatlanul bizonyítja, hogy a legtöbb felfedezést, és a legértékesebbeket is, éppen a mellékes, esetleges vagy véletlen eredményének köszönhetjük.”

„Nem a tudásban van a boldogság, hanem a tudás megszerzésében.”

„Emléked ép úgy leng felém,
Mint távol és mesés sziget
Kavargó tenger közepén,
Hol reng az óceán tömény
Dühvel, de fönt a kék eget
Fény űli folyton, tiszta fény
A mosolygó sziget felett.”

„Állok viharzó part előtt,
A tenger lihegve bőg.
Kezemben emlékek, romok,
Arany fövény, arany homok. -
Nézem, hogy hullanak ezek
A könnyű, semmi porszemek
És könnyezek - és könnyezek!
Ó Istenem! bárhogy fogom,
A porba hull lágy homlokom!
Ó Istenem! nem menekül
Egy szem se a vizek elül?
Hát minden-minden e világon
Álomba ködlő furcsa álom?”

“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.”

“Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells
From the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells.”

“Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December;
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.”

“The skies they were ashen and sober;
The leaves they were crisped and sere —
The leaves they were withering and sere;
It was night in the lonesome October
Of my most immemorial year.”

“I have sometimes amused myself by endeavouring to fancy what would be the fate of an individual gifted, or rather accursed, with an intellect very far superior to that of his race. Of course he would be conscious of his superiority; nor could he (if otherwise constituted as man is) help manifesting his consciousness. Thus he would make himself enemies at all points. And since his opinions and speculations would widely differ from those of all mankind — that he would be considered a madman is evident. How horribly painful such a condition! Hell could invent no greater torture than that of being charged with abnormal weakness on account of being abnormally strong.In like manner, nothing can be clearer than that a very generous spirit — truly feeling what all merely profess — must inevitably find itself misconceived in every direction — its motives misinterpreted. Just as extremeness of intelligence would be thought fatuity, so excess of chivalry could not fail of being looked upon as meanness in the last degree — and so on with other virtues. This subject is a painful one indeed. That individuals have so soared above the plane of their race is scarcely to be questioned; but, in looking back through history for traces of their existence, we should pass over all the biographies of the "good and the great," while we search carefully the slight records of wretches who died in prison, in Bedlam, or upon the gallows.”

“I need scarcely observe that 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. But all excitements are, through a psychal necessity, transient.”

“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.”

“Gaily bedight,
A gallant knight,
In sunshine and in shadow,
Had journeyed long,
Singing a song,
In search of Eldorado.”

“Lo! Death has reared himself a throne
In a strange city lying alone
Far down within the dim West,
Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best
Have gone to their eternal rest.”

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

“Vastness! and Age! and Memories of Eld!
Silence! and Desolation! and dim Night!
I feel ye now — I feel ye in your strength.”

“"Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil! — prophet still, if bird or devil!"”

“A strong argument for the religion of Christ is this — that offences against Charity are about the only ones which men on their death-beds can be made, not to understand, but to feel, as crime.”

“In her sepulcher there by the sea —
In her tomb by the sounding sea.”

“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.”

“If I could dwell
Where Israfel
Hath dwelt, and he where I,
He might not sing so wildly well
A mortal melody,
While a bolder note than this might swell
From my lyre within the sky.”

“While the angels, all pallid and wan,
Uprising, unveiling, affirm
That the play is the tragedy, "Man",
And its hero the Conqueror Worm.”

“Sorrow for the lost Lenore —
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore —
Nameless here for evermore.”

“For one instant the party upon the stairs remained motionless, through extremity of terror and of awe. In the next, a dozen stout arms were toiling at the wall. It fell bodily. The corpse, already greatly decayed and clotted with gore, stood erect before the eyes of the spectators. Upon its head, with red extended mouth and solitary eye of fire, sat the hideous beast whose craft had seduced me into murder, and whose informing voice had consigned me to the hangman. I had walled the monster up within the tomb!”

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

“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.”

“Yes, Heaven is thine; but this
Is a world of sweets and sours;
Our flowers are merely—flowers.”

“And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view.”

“While, like a ghastly rapid river,
Through the pale door
A hideous throng rush out forever
And laugh — but smile no more.”

“That man is not truly brave who is afraid either to seem or to be, when it suits him, a coward.”

“So blend the turrets and shadows there
That all seem pendulous in air,
While from a proud tower in the town
Death looks gigantically down.”

“Perched upon a bust of Pallas, just above my chamber door,—
Perched, and sat, and nothing more.”

“The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could; but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge. You, who so well know the nature of my soul, will not suppose, however, that I gave utterance to a threat. At length I would be avenged; this was a point definitely settled — but the very definitiveness with which it was resolved precluded the idea of risk. I must not only punish, but punish with impunity. A wrong is unredressed when retribution overtakes its redresser. It is equally unredressed when the avenger fails to make himself felt as such to him who has done the wrong.”

“Yet I am not more sure that my soul lives, than I am that perverseness is one of the primitive impulses of the human heart — one of the indivisible primary faculties, or sentiments, which give direction to the character of man. Who has not, a hundred times, found himself committing a vile or a stupid action, for no other reason than because he knows he should not? Have we not a perpetual inclination, in the teeth of our best judgement, to violate that which is Law, merely because we understand it to be such?”