Edgar Allan Poe Quotes

276 Sourced Quotes

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

Edgar Allan Poe
"Over the Mountains
Of the Moon,
Down the Valley of the Shadow,
Ride, boldly ride,"
The shade replied, —
"If you seek for Eldorado!"

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

Edgar Allan Poe
I stand amid the roar Of a surf-tormented shore, And I hold within my hand Grains of golden sand- How few! yet how they creep Through my fingers to the deep, While I weep- while I weep!

Edgar Allan Poe
Had the routine of our life at this place been known to the world, we should have been regarded as madmen —; although, perhaps, as madmen of a harmless nature.

Edgar Allan Poe
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.

Edgar Allan Poe
The depth lies in the valleys where we seek her, and not upon the mountain-tops where she is found.

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
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
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.

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
"Doubtless," said I, "what it utters is its only stock and store,
Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster
Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore.

Edgar Allan Poe
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.

Edgar Allan Poe
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.

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 then this might swell from my lyre in the sky.

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

Edgar Allan Poe
In for ever knowing, we are for ever blessed; but to know all were the curse of a fiend

Edgar Allan Poe
Our telescopes and our mathematical investigations assure us on every hand - notwithstanding the cant of the more ignorant of the priesthood - that space, and therefore that bulk, is an important consideration in the eyes of the Almighty.

Edgar Allan Poe
Wonders and wild fancies... strangely rife among mankind.

Edgar Allan Poe
In me didst thou exist-and, in my death, see by this image, which is thine own, how utterly thou hast murdered thyself.

Edgar Allan Poe
It is clear that a poem may be improperly brief. Undue brevity degenerates into mere epigrammatism. A very short poem, while now and then producing a brilliant or vivid, never produces a profound or enduring, effect. There must be the steady pressing down of the stamp upon the wax.

Edgar Allan Poe
There might be a class of beings, human once, but now to humanity invisible, for whose scrutiny, and for whose refined appreciation of the beautiful, more especially than for our own, had been set in order by God the great landscape-garden of the whole earth.

Edgar Allan Poe
Is there — is there balm in Gilead? — tell me — tell me, I implore!

Edgar Allan Poe
It is better to be a good deal prolix than even a very little obscure.

Edgar Allan Poe
I have before suggested that a genuine blackguard is never without a pocket-handkerchief.

Edgar Allan Poe
The greater amount of truth is impulsively uttered; thus the greater amount is spoken, not written.

Edgar Allan Poe
There are two bodies - the rudimental and the complete; corresponding with the two conditions of the worm and the butterfly. What we call "death," is but the painful metamorphosis. Our present incarnation is progressive, preparatory, temporary. Our future is perfected, ultimate, immortal. The ultimate life is the full design.

Edgar Allan Poe