Edgar Allan Poe Quotes

276 Sourced Quotes

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

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
I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.

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

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

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

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
"Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil! — prophet still, if bird or devil!"

Edgar Allan Poe
In the deepest slumber-no! In delirium-no! In a swoon-no! In death-no! even in the grave all is not lost.

Edgar Allan Poe
And now have I not told you that what you mistake for madness is but over-acuteness of the senses? — now, I say, there came to my ears a low, dull, quick sound, such as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton. I knew that sound too. It was the beating of the old man's heart. It increased my fury, as the beating of a drum stimulates the soldier into courage.

Edgar Allan Poe
He is, as you say, a remarkable horse, a prodigious horse, although as you very justly observe, a suspicious and untractable character.

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
There neither exists nor can exist any work more thoroughly dignified — more supremely noble than this very poem — this poem per se — this poem which is a poem and nothing more — this poem written solely for the poem's sake.

Edgar Allan Poe
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 tomorrow I die, and today I would unburthen my soul.

Edgar Allan Poe
And when, amid no earthly moans,
Down, down that town shall settle hence,
Hell, rising from a thousand thrones,
Shall do it reverence.

Edgar Allan Poe
To him, who still would gaze upon the glory of the summer sun, there comes, when that sun will from him part, a sullen hopelessness of heart.

Edgar Allan Poe
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.

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

Edgar Allan Poe
As for Republicanism, no analogy could be found for it upon the face of the earth—unless we except the case of the "prairie dogs," an exception which seems to demonstrate, if anything, that democracy is a very admirable form of government—for dogs.

Edgar Allan Poe
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.

Edgar Allan Poe
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 than this might swell
From my lyre within the sky.

Edgar Allan Poe
Beauty of whatever kind, in its supreme development, invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears.

Edgar Allan Poe
The writer who neglects punctuation, or mispunctuates, is liable to be misunderstood for the want of merely a comma, it often occurs that an axiom appears a paradox, or that a sarcasm is converted into a sermonoid.

Edgar Allan Poe
Yes I now feel that it was then on that evening of sweet dreams- that the very first dawn of human love burst upon the icy night of my spirit. Since that period I have never seen nor heard your name without a shiver half of delight half of anxiety.

Edgar Allan Poe
From childhood's hour I have not been
As others were — I have not seen
As others saw — I could not bring
My passions from a common spring —
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow — I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone —
And all I lov'd — I lov'd alone —

Edgar Allan Poe
That single thought is enough. The impulse increases to a wish, the wish to a desire, the desire to an uncontrollable longing, and the longing (to the deep regret and mortification of the speaker, and in defiance of all consequences,) is indulged.

Edgar Allan Poe