“With me poetry has been not a purpose, but a passion; and the passions should be held in reverence: they must not — they cannot at will be excited, with an eye to the paltry compensations, or the more paltry commendations, of mankind.”

The Raven and Other Poems (1845), Preface

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Sept. 29, 2023. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "With me poetry has been not a purpose, but a passion; and the passions should be held in reverence: they must not — the…" by Edgar Allan Poe?
Edgar Allan Poe photo
Edgar Allan Poe 126
American author, poet, editor and literary critic 1809–1849

Related quotes

Sören Kierkegaard photo
Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle photo

“The Epicureans especially made sport with the paltry Poetry that came from Delphos.”

Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle (1657–1757) French writer, satirist and philosopher of enlightenment

The History of Oracles, and the Cheats of the Pagan Priests (1688)
Context: [A]bout the time of Alexander the Great, a little before Pyrrhus's days, there appear'd in Greece certain great Sects of Philosophers, such as the Peripateticks and Epicureans, who made a mock of Oracles. The Epicureans especially made sport with the paltry Poetry that came from Delphos. For the Priests hammered out their Verses as well as they could, and they often times committed faults against the common Rules of Prosodia. Now those Fleering Philosophers were mightily concerned that Apollo, the very God of Poetry, should come so far behind Homer, who was but a meer mortal, and was beholding to the same Apollo for his inspirations.<!--p. 220

W.B. Yeats photo

“Never had I more
Excited, passionate, fantastical
Imagination, nor an ear and eye
That more expected the impossible.”

The Tower http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1700/, I
The Tower (1928)

Florence Nightingale photo

“No woman has excited "passions" among women more than I have. Yet I leave no school behind me.”

Florence Nightingale (1820–1910) English social reformer and statistician, and the founder of modern nursing

Letter to Madame Mohl (13 December 1861)
The Life of Florence Nightingale (1913)
Context: Now just look at the degree in which women have sympathy — as far as my experience is concerned. And my experience of women is almost as large as Europe. And it is so intimate too. I have lived and slept in the same bed with English Countesses and Prussian Bauerinnen [farm laborers]. No Roman Catholic Supérieure [president of a French university system known for their diverse, eclectic teaching methods] has ever had charge of women of the different creeds that I have had. No woman has excited "passions" among women more than I have. Yet I leave no school behind me. My doctrines have taken no hold among women. … No woman that I know has ever appris à apprendre [learned to learn]. And I attribute this to want of sympathy. You say somewhere that women have no attention. Yes. And I attribute this to want of sympathy. … It makes me mad, the Women's Rights talk about "the want of a field" for them — when I know that I would gladly give £500 a year [roughly $50,000 a year in 2008] for a Woman Secretary. And two English Lady Superintendents have told me the same thing. And we can't get one.

Edgar Allan Poe photo
W. H. Auden photo
Varadaraja V. Raman photo

“When the poet said that for him poetry was not a purpose, but a passion, he was also expressing the feelings of the true scientist to his own field.”

Varadaraja V. Raman (1932) American physicist

THOUGHTS ON SCIENCE AND LITERATURE’’
Truth and Tension in Science and Religion

Bertrand Russell photo

“The opinions that are held with passion are always those for which no good ground exists; indeed the passion is the measure of the holder's lack of rational conviction. Opinions in politics and religion are almost always held passionately.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Source: Introduction to 1961 edition of Sceptical Essays (1961)

Nicholas Sparks photo
Oriana Fallaci photo

“People like me who have passion are derided: 'Ha ha ha! She's hysterical!' 'She's very passionate!' Listen how the Americans speak about me: 'A very passionate Italian.”

Oriana Fallaci (1929–2006) Italian writer

Gurley, George. "The Rage of Oriana Fallaci" http://observer.com/2003/01/the-rage-of-oriana-fallaci/, The New York Observer (27 January 2003)

Related topics