Edgar Allan Poe Quotes

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The word "Verse" is used here as the term most convenient for expressing, and without pedantry, all that is involved in the consideration of rhythm, rhyme, meter, and versification... the subject is exceedingly simple; one tenth of it, possibly, may be called ethical; nine tenths, however, appertains to the mathematics.

Edgar Allan Poe
And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Thrilled me — filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before.

Edgar Allan Poe
In visions of the dark night I have dreamed of joy departed— But a waking dream of life and light Hath left me broken-hearted.

Edgar Allan Poe
I never can hear a crowd of people singing and gesticulating, all together, at an Italian opera, without fancying myself at Athens, listening to that particular tragedy, by Sophocles, in which he introduces a full chorus of turkeys, who set about bewailing the death of Meleager.

Edgar Allan Poe
It was down by the dank tarn of Auber,
In the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.

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

Edgar Allan Poe
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.

Edgar Allan Poe
I was cautious in what I said before the young lady; for I could not be sure that she was sane; and, in fact, there was a certain restless brilliancy about her eyes that half led me to imagine she was not.

Edgar Allan Poe
I fashion the expression of my face, as accurately as possible, in accordance with the expression of his, and then wait to see what thoughts or sentiments arise in my mind or heart, as if to match or correspond with the expression.

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

Edgar Allan Poe
The agony of my soul found vent in one loud, long and final scream of despair.

Edgar Allan Poe
If you have never been at sea in a heavy gale, you can form no idea of the confusion of mind occasioned by wind and spry together. They blind, deafen, and strangle you, and take away all power of action or reflection.

Edgar Allan Poe
"Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the Nightly shore —
Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore!"
Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."

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

Edgar Allan Poe
Indeed, there is an eloquence in true enthusiasm that is not to be doubted.

Edgar Allan Poe
Every moment of the night Forever changing places And they put out the star-light With the breath from their pale faces

Edgar Allan Poe
Yet I am not more sure that my soul lives, than I am that perverseness is one of the primitive impulses of the human heart — one of the indivisible primary faculties, or sentiments, which give direction to the character of man. Who has not, a hundred times, found himself committing a vile or a stupid action, for no other reason than because he knows he should not? Have we not a perpetual inclination, in the teeth of our best judgement, to violate that which is Law, merely because we understand it to be such?

Edgar Allan Poe
Yet we met; and fate bound us together at the alter, and I never spoke of passion nor thought of love. She, however shunned society, and, attaching herself to me alone rendered me happy. It is a happiness to wonder; it is a happiness to dream.

Edgar Allan Poe
Thus I pacified Psyche and kissed her,
And tempted her out of her gloom.

Edgar Allan Poe