Edgar Allan Poe Quotes

276 Sourced Quotes

I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.

Edgar Allan Poe
I have great faith in fools — self-confidence my friends will call it.

Edgar Allan Poe
Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.

Edgar Allan Poe
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.

Edgar Allan Poe
The nose of a mob is its imagination. By this, at any time, it can be quietly led.

Edgar Allan Poe
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

Edgar Allan Poe
They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.

Edgar Allan Poe
If you wish to forget anything on the spot, make a note that this thing is to be remembered.

Edgar Allan Poe
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".

Edgar Allan Poe
That man is not truly brave who is afraid either to seem or to be, when it suits him, a coward.

Edgar Allan Poe
With me poetry has been not a purpose, but a passion; and the passions should be held in reverence: they must not — they cannot at will be excited, with an eye to the paltry compensations, or the more paltry commendations, of mankind.

Edgar Allan Poe
I might refer at once, if necessary, to a hundred well authenticated instances. One of very remarkable character, and of which the circumstances may be fresh in the memory of some of my readers, occurred, not very long ago, in the neighboring city of Baltimore, where it occasioned a painful, intense, and widely extended excitement.

Edgar Allan Poe
There are moments when, even to the sober eye of Reason, the world of our sad humanity must assume the aspect of Hell.

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

Edgar Allan Poe
No murmur arose from its bed, and so gently it wandered along, that the pearly pebbles upon which we loved to gaze, far down within its bosom, stirred not at all, but lay in a motionless content, each in its own old station, shining on gloriously forever.

Edgar Allan Poe
It was night, and the rain fell; and falling, it was rain, but, having fallen, it was blood.

Edgar Allan Poe
But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we —
Of many far wiser than we —
And neither the angels in Heaven above
Nor the demons down under the sea
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee

Edgar Allan Poe
I was never kinder to the old man than during the whole week before I killed him.

Edgar Allan Poe
And then there stole into my fancy, like a rich musical note, the thought of what sweet rest there must be in the grave.

Edgar Allan Poe
And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door, That I scarce was sure I heard you"— here I opened wide the door; — Darkness there, and nothing more.

Edgar Allan Poe
Thou wouldst be loved? — then let thy heart
From its present pathway part not!
Being everything which now thou art,
Be nothing which thou art not.
So with the world thy gentle ways,
Thy grace, thy more than beauty,
Shall be an endless theme of praise,
And love — a simple duty.

Edgar Allan Poe
It is the nature of truth in general, as of some ores in particular, to be richest when most superficial.

Edgar Allan Poe
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.

Edgar Allan Poe
Hast thou not torn the Naiad from her flood,
The Elfin from the green grass, and from me
The summer dream beneath the tamarind tree?

Edgar Allan Poe
For years your name never passed my lips, while my soul drank in, with a delirious thirst, all that was uttered in my presence respecting you....

Edgar Allan Poe