Edgar Allan Poe Quotes

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Not hear it? —yes, I hear it, and have heard it. Long —long —long —many minutes, many hours, many days, have I heard it —yet I dared not —oh, pity me, miserable wretch that I am! —I dared not —I dared not speak! We have put her living in the tomb!

Edgar Allan Poe
While, like a ghastly rapid river,
Through the pale door
A hideous throng rush out forever
And laugh — but smile no more.

Edgar Allan Poe
If the propositions of this Discourse are tenable, the "state of progressive collapse" is precisely that state in which alone we are warranted in considering All Things.

Edgar Allan Poe
It is impossible to describe, or to imagine, the deep, the blissful sense of relief which the absence of the detested creature occasioned in my bosom. It did not make its appearance during the night — and thus for one night at least, since its introduction into the house, I soundly and tranquilly slept; aye, slept even with the burden of murder upon my soul!

Edgar Allan Poe
I grew, day by day, more moody, more irritable, more regardless of the feelings of others. I suffered myself to use intemperate language to my wife. At length, I even offered her personal violence.

Edgar Allan Poe
I attacked with great resolution the editorial matter, and, reading it from beginning to end without understanding a syllable, conceived the possibility of its being Chinese, and so re-read it from the end to the beginning, but with no more satisfactory result.

Edgar Allan Poe
There was much of the beautiful, much of the wanton, much of the bizarre, something of the terrible, and not a little of that which might have excited disgust.

Edgar Allan Poe
Here once, through an alley Titanic,
Of cypress, I roamed with my Soul —
Of cypress, with Psyche, my Soul.

Edgar Allan Poe
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.

Edgar Allan Poe
The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could; but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge. You, who so well know the nature of my soul, will not suppose, however, that I gave utterance to a threat. At length I would be avenged; this was a point definitely settled — but the very definitiveness with which it was resolved precluded the idea of risk. I must not only punish, but punish with impunity. 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.

Edgar Allan Poe
A dark unfathom'd tide
Of interminable pride —
A mystery, and a dream,
Should my early life seem.

Edgar Allan Poe
If we cannot comprehend God in his visible works, how then in his inconceivable thoughts, that call the works into being?

Edgar Allan Poe
Perched upon a bust of Pallas, just above my chamber door,—
Perched, and sat, and nothing more.

Edgar Allan Poe
When, indeed, men speak of Beauty, they mean, precisely, not a quality, as is supposed, but an effect - they refer, in short, just to that intense and pure elevation of soul - not of intellect, or of heart.

Edgar Allan Poe
A dirge for the most lovely dead
That ever died so young!

Edgar Allan Poe
Finally on Sunday morning, October 7, 1849, "He became quiet and seemed to rest for a short time. Then, gently, moving his head," he said, "Lord help my poor soul." As he had lived so he died-in great misery and tragedy.

Edgar Allan Poe
Eagerly I wished the morrow,—vainly had I sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow—sorrow for the lost Lenore—
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore—
Nameless here for evermore.

Edgar Allan Poe
I found him well educated, with unusual powers of mind, but infected with misanthropy, and subject to perverse moods of alternate enthusiasm and melancholy.

Edgar Allan Poe
In response to charges that he had been influenced by the Germans:
If in many of my productions terror has been the thesis, I maintain that terror is not of Germany, but of the soul—that I have deduced this terror only from its legitimate sources, and urged it only to its legitimate results.

Edgar Allan Poe
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.

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

Edgar Allan Poe
We had always dwelled together, beneath a tropical sun, in the Valley of the Many Colored Grass.

Edgar Allan Poe
There is then no analogy whatever between the operations of the Chess-Player, and those of the calculating machine of Mr. Babbage, and if we choose to call the former a pure machine we must be prepared to admit that it is, beyond all comparison, the most wonderful of the inventions of mankind.

Edgar Allan Poe
Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe, and forget this lost Lenore!

Edgar Allan Poe
Can it be fancied that Deity ever vindictively
Made in his image a mannikin merely to madden it?

Edgar Allan Poe
Beneath the pressure of torments such as these, the feeble remnant of the good within me succumbed. Evil thoughts became my sole intimates — the darkest and most evil of thoughts. The moodiness of my usual temper increased to hatred of all things and of all mankind; while, from the sudden, frequent, and ungovernable outbursts of a fury to which I now blindly abandoned myself, my uncomplaining wife, alas! was the most usual and the most patient of sufferers.

Edgar Allan Poe
I dread the events of the future, not in themselves but in their results.

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

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
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