Edgar Allan Poe Quotes

It is with literature as with law or empire - an established name is an estate in tenure, or a throne in possession.

Many years ago, I contracted an intimacy with a Mr. William Legrand. He was of an ancient Huguenot family, and had once been wealthy; but a series of misfortunes had reduced him to want.

We gave him a hearty welcome, for there was nearly half as much of the entertaining as of the contemptible about the man.

As a viewed myself in a fragment of looking-glass..., I was so impressed with a sense of vague awe at my appearance ... that I was seized with a violent tremour.

If I could dwell where Israfel hath dwelt and he where I he might not sing so wildly well a mortal melody while a bolder note then this might swell from my lyre in the sky.

We allude to the short prose narrative, requiring from a half hour to one or two hours in its perusal

Perched upon a bust of Pallas, just above my chamber door,- Perched, and sat, and nothing more.

Over the Mountains Of the Moon, Down the Valley of the Shadow, Ride, boldly ride," The shade replied,- "If you seek for Eldorado.

In the marginalia ... we talk only to ourselves; we therefore talk freshly - boldly - originally - with abandonment - without conceit.

You call it hope — that fire of fire!It is but agony of desire.

I have no words — alas! — to tellThe loveliness of loving well!

I intend to put up with nothing that I can put

Experience has shown, and a true philosophy will always show, that a vast, perhaps the larger, portion of truth arises from the seemingly irrelevant.

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

The death of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world.

At midnight, in the month of June, I stand beneath the mystic moon.

I would define, in brief, the poetry of words as the rhythmical creation of beauty.

I have been happy, though in a dream.I have been happy-and I love the theme:Dreams! in their vivid colouring of lifeAs in that fleeting, shadowy, misty strife

Depend upon it, after all, Thomas, Literature is the most noble of professions. In fact, it is about the only one fit for a man. For my own part, there is no seducing me from the path.

I am a writer. Therefore. I am not sane.

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

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

The ninety and nine are with dreams, content, but the hope of the world made new, is the hundredth man who is grimly bent on making those dreams come true.

There is no exquisite beauty… without some strangeness in the proportion.

A feeling, for which I have no name, has taken possession of my soul.

In the strange anomaly of my existence, feelings with me had never been of the heart, and my passions always were of the mind.

And have I not told you that what you mistake for madness is but over-acuteness of the sense?

I do believe God gave me a spark of genius, but he quenched it in misery.

So resolute is the world to despise anything which carries with it an air of simplicity.

The eye, like a shattered mirror, multiplies the images of sorrow.

Horrors of a nature most stern and most appalling would too frequently obtrude themselves upon my mind, and shake the innermost depths of my soul with the bare supposition of their possibility.

From childhood's hour I have not beenAs others were - I have not seenAs others saw - I could not bringMy passions from a common spring -

The scariest monsters are the ones that lurk within our souls...

Believe nothing you hear, and only one half that you see.

I blush, I burn, I shudder, while I pen the damnable atrocity.

I have graven it within the hills, and my vengeance upon the dust within the rock.

Be nothing which thou art not

I was a child and she was a child, In this kingdom by the sea, But we loved with a love that was more than love— I and my Annabel Lee—

The true genius shudders at incompleteness — imperfection — and usually prefers silence to saying the something which is not everything that should be said.

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

I continued, as was my wont, to smile in his face, and he did not perceive that my smile now was at the thought of his immolation.

For eyes we have no models in the remotely antique.

Never to suffer would never to have been blessed.

Deep in earth my love is lyingAnd I must weep alone.

Every moment of the nightForever changing placesAnd they put out the star-lightWith the breath from their pale faces

It is evident that we are hurrying onward to some exciting knowledge—some never-to-be-imparted secret, whose attainment is destruction.

In criticism, I will be bold, and as sternly, absolutely just with friend and foe. From this purpose nothing shall turn me.

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

Now this is the point. You fancy me a mad. Madmen know nothing. But you should have seen me. You should have seen how wisely I proceeded...

I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell. How, then, am I mad?