Passion then, is the characteristic mark of poetry, and, consequently, must be every where: for wherever a discourse is not pathetic, there it is prosaic."

Thee, bold Longinus! All the Nine inspire,

And bless their critic with a poet’s fire.

An ardent judge, who zealous in his trust,

With warmth gives sentence, yet is always just;

Whose own example strengthens all his laws,

And is himself that great Sublime he draws.

…when we view some well-proportion’d dome,

(The world’s just wonder, and ev’n thine, O Rome!)

No single parts unequally surprize,

All comes united to th’admiring eyes;

No monstrous height, or breadth, or length appear;

The whole at once is bold, and regular.

[…a Critick,] …if we have not read Longinus

Will magesterially out-shine us.

Then lest with Greek he over-run ye,

Procure the Book for Love or Money.

There is a kind of inconsistancy in the productions of great Geniuses. Now you shall see them striking the clouds with their heads; now touching the lowest ground; they have their risings, and they have their wants….

The language of reason is cool, temperate, rather humble than elevated, well arranged and perspicuous…. The language of the passions is totally different: the conceptions burst out into a turbid stream, expressive in a manner of the internal conflict… In a word, reason speaks literally, the passions poetically.

I look on fine Phrases like a lover.

When composition begins, inspiration is already on the decline.

It is needless to demonstrate that a poem is such, only inasmuch as it intensely excites, by elevating, the soul; and all intense excitements are, through a psychal necessity, brief.

-Edgar Allen Poe