Edgar Allan Poe Quotes

To vilify a great man is the readiest way in which a little man can himself attain greatness.

In our endeavors to recall to memory something long forgotten, we often find ourselves upon the very verge of remembrance, without being able, in the end, to remember.

I seemed to be upon the verge of comprehension, without the power to comprehend as men, at time, find themselves upon the brink of rememberance, without being able, in the end, to remember.

In the Heaven's above, the angels, whispering to one another, can find, among their burning terms of love, none so devotional as that of 'Mother.

Yet, mad am I not — and very surely do I not dream.

I hold that a long poem does not exist. I maintain that the phrase, "a long poem," is simply a flat contradiction in terms.

...If you do not take it up with you in some way, I shall be under the necessity of breaking your head with this shovel

A man's grammar, like Caesar's wife, must not only be pure, but above suspicion of impurity.

It is by no means an irrational fancy that, in a future existence, we shall look upon what we think our present existence, as a dream.

Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best have gone to their eternal rest.

It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain, but, once conceived, it haunted me day and night.

We now demand the light artillery of the intellect; we need the curt, the condensed, the pointed, the readily diffused -- in place of the verbose, the detailed, the voluminous, the inaccessible.

The pioneers and missionaries of religion have been the real cause of more trouble and war than all other classes of mankind.

I have no words alas! to tell the loveliness of loving well

Children are never too tender to be whipped. Like tough beefsteaks, the more you beat them, the more tender they become.

Books, indeed, were his sole luxuries

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

Ghastly grim and ancient raven wandering from the nightly shore - Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore! Quoth the raven, 'Nevermore.

When a madman appears thoroughly sane, indeed, it is high time to put him in a straight jacket.

Happiness is not to be found in knowledge, but in the acquisition of knowledge

All works of art should begin... at the end.

A poem in my opinion, is opposed to a work of science by having for its immediate object, pleasure, not truth.

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

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 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.

The reproduction of what the senses perceive in nature through the veil of the soul.

Either the memory of past bliss is the anguish of to-day; or the agonies which are have their origins in ecstasies which might have been.

I dread the events of the future, not in themselves but in their results.

I have, indeed, no abhorrence of danger, except in its absolute effect - in terror.

the truth is, I am heartily sick of this life & of the nineteenth century in general. (I am convinced that every thing is going wrong.)

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

The higher powers of the reflective intellect are more decidedly and more usefully tasked by the unostentatious game of draughts than by all the elaborate frivolity of chess.

How many good books suffer neglect through the inefficiency of their beginnings!

The idea of God, infinity, or spirit stands for the possible attempt at an impossible conception.

It will be found, in fact, that the ingenious are always fanciful, and the truly imaginative never otherwise than analytic.

And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.

The result of law inviolate is perfection–right–negative happiness. The result of law violate is imperfection, wrong, positive pain.

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.

Indeed, there is an eloquence in true enthusiasm that is not to be doubted.

Odors have an altogether peculiar force, in affecting us through association; a force differing essentially from that of objects addressing the touch, the taste, the sight or the hearing.

Decorum -- that bug-bear which deters so many from bliss until the opportunity for bliss has forever gone by.

The rain came down upon my head - Unshelter'd. And the wind rendered me mad and deaf and blind.

Beauty is the sole legitimate province of the poem.

A mystery, and a dream, should my early life seem.

[The daguerreotype] itself must undoubtedly be regarded as the most important, and perhaps the most extraordinary triumph of modern science.

The customs of the world are so many conventional follies.

From a proud tower in the town, Death looks gigantically down.

To be thoroughly conversant with Man’s heart, is to take our final lesson in the iron-clasped volume of Despair

If we cannot comprehend God in his visible works, how then in his inconceivable thoughts, that call the works into being?

Science has not yet taught us if madness is or is not the sublimity of the intelligence.