Edgar Allan Poe Quotes

1. A poem deserves its title only inasmuch as it excites, by elevating the soul. 
2. 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. 
3. A woman being never at a loss... the devil always sticks by them. 
4. A wrong is unredressed when retribution overtakes its redresser. It is equally unredressed when the avenger fails to make himself felt as such to him who has done the wrong. 
5. After reading all that has been written, and after thinking all that can be thought on the topics of God and the soul, the man who has a right to say that he thinks at all, will find himself face to face with the conclusion that, on these topics, the most profound thought is that which can be the least easily distinguished from the most superficial sentiment. 
6. Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December; And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor. 
7. All religion, my friend, is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination, and poetry. 
8. All that we see or seem, is but a dream within a dream. 
9. And all I loved, I loved alone. 
10. And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor. 
11. And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor shall be lifted — nevermore! 
12. And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain, Thrilled me -- filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before.  
13. And when, amid no earthly moans, down, down that town shall settle hence, hell, rising from a thousand thrones, shall do it reverence. 
14. Beauty is the sole legitimate province of the poem. 
15. But as, in ethics, evil is a consequence of good, so, in fact, out of joy is sorrow born. Either the memory of past bliss is the anguish of to-day, or the agonies which are have their origin in the ecstasies which might have been. 
16. Convinced myself, I seek not to convince. 
17. Decorum -- that bug-bear which deters so many from bliss until the opportunity for bliss has forever gone by. 
18. 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. 
19. Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before. 
20. Either the memory of past bliss is the anguish of to-day, or the agonies which are have their origin in the ecstasies which might have been. 
21. Even for those to whom life and death are equal jests. There are some things that are still held in respect. 
22. Even in the grave, all is not lost. 
23. Experience has shown, and a true philosophy will always show, that a vast, perhaps the larger, portion of truth arises from the seemingly irrelevant. 
24. For the most wild, yet most homely narrative which I am about to pen, I neither expect nor solicit belief. Mad indeed would I be to expect it, in a case where my very senses reject their own evidence. Yet, mad am I not — and very surely do I not dream. But to-morrow I die, and to-day I would unburthen my soul. 
25. How many good books suffer neglect through the inefficiency of their beginnings! 
26. I am above the weakness of seeking to establish a sequence of cause and effect, between the disaster and the atrocity. 
27. I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity. 
28. I felt that I breathed an atmosphere of sorrow. 
29. I have great faith in fools — self-confidence my friends will call it. 
30. 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. 
31. I was never kinder to the old man than during the whole week before I killed him. 
32. I wish I could write as mysterious as a cat. 
33. I went as a passenger, having no other inducement than a kind of nervous restlessness which haunted me as a fiend. 
34. If you still think me mad, you will think so no longer when I describe the wise precautions I took for the concealment of the body. The night waned, and I worked hastily, but in silence. First of all I dismembered the corpse. I cut off the head and the arms and the legs. 
35. If you run out of ideas follow the road; you'll get there. 
36. If you wish to forget anything on the spot, make a note that this thing is to be remembered. 
37. Imperceptibly the love of these discords grew upon me as my love of music grew stronger. 
38. In criticism, I will be bold, and as sternly, absolutely just with friend and foe. From this purpose nothing shall turn me. 
39. 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. 
40. In our endeavours 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. 
41. In reading some books we occupy ourselves chiefly with the thoughts of the author; in perusing others, exclusively with our own. 
42. Invisible things are the only realities. 
43. It is the nature of truth in general, as of some ores in particular, to be richest when most superficial. 
44. It will be found, in fact, that the ingenious are always fanciful, and the truly imaginative never otherwise than analytic. 
45. It would be mockery to call such dreariness heaven at all. 
46. Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore... 
47. Keeping time, time, time, in a sort of runic rhyme, to the tintinnabulation that so musically wells, From the bells, bells, bells. 
48. Music, when combined with a pleasurable idea, is poetry; music, without the idea, is simply music; the idea, without the music, is prose, from its very definitiveness. 
49. Mysteries force a man to think, and so injure his health. 
50. Never to suffer would never to have been blessed. 
51. No one should brave the underworld alone. 
52. Of puns it has been said that those who most dislike them are those who are least able to utter them. 
53. Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary. 
54. Perversity is the human thirst for self-torture. 
55. Poetry is the rhythmical creation of beauty in words. 
56. Science has not yet taught us if madness is or is not the sublimity of the intelligence. 
57. Sensations are the great things, after all. Should you ever be drowned or hung, be sure and make a note of your sensations; they will be worth to you ten guineas a sheet. 
58. Sleep, those little slices of death. Oh how I loathe them. 
59. Sometimes I’m terrified of my heart; of its constant hunger for whatever it is it wants. The way it stops and starts. 
60. Sound loves to revel in a summer night. 
61. Stupidity is a talent for misconception. 
62. That man is not truly brave who is afraid either to seem or to be, when it suits him, a coward. 
63. That pleasure which is at once the most pure, the most elevating and the most intense, is derived, I maintain, from the contemplation of the beautiful. 
64. The best things in life make you sweaty. 
65. The customs of the world are so many conventional follies. 
66. 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. 
67. The nose of a mob is its imagination. By this, at any time, it can be quietly led. 
68. There are few cases in which mere popularity should be considered a proper test of merit; but the case of song-writing is, I think, one of the few. 
69. The object, Truth, or the satisfaction of the intellect, and the object, Passion, or the excitement of the heart, are, although attainable, to a certain extent, in poetry, far more readily attainable in prose. 
70. The past is a pebble in my shoe. 
71. The rudiment of verse may, possibly, be found in the spondee. 
72. The skies they were ashen and sober; The leaves they were crisped and sere -- The leaves they were withering and sere; It was night in the lonesome October, Of my most immemorial year. 
73. There are few cases in which mere popularity should be considered a proper test of merit; but the case of song-writing is, I think, one of the few. 
74. There are some secrets which do not permit themselves to be told. 
75. There is an eloquence in true enthusiasm. 
76. There is no exquisite beauty… without some strangeness in the proportion. 
77. They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night. 
78. To die laughing must be the most glorious of all glorious deaths! 
79. To vilify a great man is the readiest way in which a little man can himself attain greatness. 
80. 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. 
81. When a madman appears thoroughly sane, indeed, it is high time to put him in a straight jacket. 
82. Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best have gone to their eternal rest. 
83. With me poetry has not been a purpose, but a passion. 
84. Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality. 
85. Years of love have been forgot, In the hatred of a minute.