With me poetry has not been a purpose, but a passion. — Edgar Allan Poe

I certainly can't speak for all cultures or all societies, but it's clear that in America, poetry serves a very marginal purpose. It's not part of the cultural mainstream. — Mark Strand
Science arose from poetry... when times change the two can meet again on a higher level as friends. — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The purpose of Compulsory Education is to deprive the common people of their commonsense. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
That man is not truly brave who is afraid either to seem or to be, when it suits him, a coward. — Edgar Allan Poe
All religion, my friend, is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination, and poetry. — Edgar Allan Poe
Beauty of whatever kind, in its supreme development, invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears. — Edgar Allan Poe