quotes from classic

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

more quotes from Edgar Allan Poe

There is something in the unselfish and self-sacrificing love of a brute, which goes directly to the heart of him who has had frequent occasion to test the paltry friendship and gossamer fidelity of mere Man.

more quotes from Edgar Allan Poe

I have no faith in human perfectability. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active - not more happy - nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago.

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Beauty of whatever kind, in its supreme development, invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears.

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Man's real life is happy, chiefly because he is ever expecting that it soon will be so.

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The best chess-player in Christendom may be little more than the best player of chess; but proficiency in whist implies capacity for success in all these more important undertakings where mind struggles with mind.

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I have great faith in fools; self-confidence my friends call it.

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I never can hear a crowd of people singing and gesticulating, all together, at an Italian opera, without fancying myself at Athens, listening to that particular tragedy, by Sophocles, in which he introduces a full chorus of turkeys, who set about bewailing the death of Meleager.

more quotes from Edgar Allan Poe

Were I called on to define, very briefly, the term Art, I should call it 'the reproduction of what the Senses perceive in Nature through the veil of the soul.' The mere imitation, however accurate, of what is in Nature, entitles no man to the sacred name of 'Artist.'

more quotes from Edgar Allan Poe

The true genius shudders at incompleteness - and usually prefers silence to saying something which is not everything it should be.

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Poetry is the rhythmical creation of beauty in words.

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In one case out of a hundred a point is excessively discussed because it is obscure; in the ninety-nine remaining it is obscure because it is excessively discussed.

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

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All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.

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A gentleman with a pug nose is a contradiction in terms.

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With me poetry has not been a purpose, but a passion.

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We must travel in the direction of our fear.

more quotes from John Berryman

Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so. After all, the sky flashes, the great sea yearns, we ourselves flash and yearn, and moreover my mother told me as a boy (repeatedly) Ever to confess you're bored means you have no inner Resources. I conclude now I have no inner resources, because I am heavy bored.

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The artist is extremely lucky who is presented with the worst possible ordeal which will not actually kill him. At that point, he's in business.

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The bird of paradise alights only upon the hand that does not grasp.

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