Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) was an American writer, poet, editor, and literary critic. Poe is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and the macabre.
He is widely regarded as a central figure of Romanticism in the United States, and of American literature.
Poe is the first well-known American writer to earn a living through writing alone, resulting in a financially difficult life and career. Poe was one of the country's earliest practitioners of the short story, and considered to be the inventor of the detective fiction genre, as well as a significant contributor to the emerging genre of science fiction.
Inspirational Quotes By Edgar Allan Poe That Will Help You See The Brighter Side Of Life. Edgar Allan Poe Love Poems.
Here is A selection of some of Edgar Allan Poe most famous quotes. Edgar Allan Poe Quotes about Life, Love, Beauty and Insanity. Romantic and sad quotes by Edgar Allan Poe.
Edgar Allan Poe Famous Quotes and Sayings
All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.
We loved with a love that was more than love.
I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.
Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.
There is no exquisite beauty… without some strangeness in the proportion.
I have great faith in fools - self-confidence my friends will call it.
Believe nothing you hear, and only one half that you see.
I was never really insane except upon occasions when my heart was touched.
From childhood's hour I have not been. As others were, I have not seen. As others saw, I could not awaken. My heart to joy at the same tone. And all I loved, I loved alone.
Never to suffer would never to have been blessed.
Sleep, those little slices of death — how I loathe them.
Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality.
Years of love have been forgot, In the hatred of a minute.
If you wish to forget anything on the spot, make a note that this thing is to be remembered.
All religion, my friend, is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination, and poetry.
And so being young and dipped in folly I fell in love with melancholy.
I wish I could write as mysterious as a cat.
I felt that I breathed an atmosphere of sorrow.
Deep in earth my love is lying And I must weep alone.
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.
I have no faith in human perfectibility. 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.
And all I loved, I loved alone.
Invisible things are the only realities.
Beauty of whatever kind, in its supreme development, invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears.
The death of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world.
Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.
I remained too much inside my head and ended up losing my mind.
The true genius shudders at incompleteness — imperfection — and usually prefers silence to saying the something which is not everything that should be said.
Science has not yet taught us if madness is or is not the sublimity of the intelligence.
With me poetry has not been a purpose, but a passion.
I dread the events of the future, not in themselves but in their results.
There are some secrets which do not permit themselves to be told.
That which you mistake for madness is but an over-acuteness of the senses.
I would define, in brief, the poetry of words as the rhythmical creation of beauty.
Poetry is the rhythmical creation of beauty in words.
Now this is the point. You fancy me a mad. Madmen know nothing. But you should have seen me. You should have seen how wisely I proceeded...
To elevate the soul, poetry is necessary.
I intend to put up with nothing that I can put down.
It is a happiness to wonder; — it is a happiness to dream.
There are chords in the hearts of the most reckless which cannot be touched without emotion.
The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins?
Even in the grave, all is not lost.
Every poem should remind the reader that they are going to die.
Yet mad I am not... and very surely do I not dream.
To die laughing must be the most glorious of all glorious deaths!
Convinced myself, I seek not to convince.
Men have called me mad; but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence.
Stupidity is a talent for misconception.
A short story must have a single mood and every sentence must build towards it.
True, nervous, very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am, but why will say that I am mad?! The disease had sharpened my senses, not destroyed, not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute.
And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.
And I fell violently on my face.
Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore...
The fury of a demon instantly possessed me. I knew myself no longer. My original soul seemed, at once, to take its flight from my body; and a more than fiendish malevolence, gin-nurtured, thrilled every fibre of my frame.
Art is to look at not to criticize.
Leave my loneliness unbroken.
Is all that we see or seem But a dream within a dream?
Even with the utterly lost, to whom life and death are equally jests, there are matters of which no jest can be made.
In beauty of face no maiden ever equaled her. It was the radiance of an opium-dream - an airy and spirit-lifting vision more wildly divine than the fantasies which hovered about the slumbering souls of the daughters of Delos.
The ninety and nine are with dreams, content, but the hope of the world made new, is the hundredth man who is grimly bent on making those dreams come true.
Experience has shown, and a true philosophy will always show, that a vast, perhaps the larger, portion of truth arises from the seemingly irrelevant.
A man's grammar, like Caesar's wife, should not only be pure, but above suspicion of impurity.
The scariest monsters are the ones that lurk within our souls...
Villains!' I shrieked. 'Dissemble no more! I admit the deed! Tear up the planks! Here, here! It is the beating of his hideous heart!
Lord help my poor soul.
Mysteries force a man to think, and so injure his health.
In criticism, I will be bold, and as sternly, absolutely just with friend and foe. From this purpose nothing shall turn me.
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.
The rain came down upon my head - Unshelter'd. And the wind rendered me mad and deaf and blind.
The idea of God, infinity, or spirit stands for the possible attempt at an impossible conception.
That fitful strain of melancholy which will ever be found inseparable from the perfection of the beautiful.
I was never kinder to the old man than during the whole week before I killed him.
We gave the Future to the winds, and slumbered tranquilly in the Present, weaving the dull world around us into dreams.
Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best have gone to their eternal rest.
But as, in ethics, evil is a consequence of good, so, in fact, out of joy is sorrow born. Either the memory of past bliss is the anguish of today, or the agonies which are have their origin in the ecstasies which might have been.
There is an eloquence in true enthusiasm.
A million candles have burned themselves out. Still I read on.
When a madman appears thoroughly sane, indeed, it is high time to put him in a straight jacket.
Blood was its Avatar and its seal.
Either the memory of past bliss is the anguish of to-day; or the agonies which are have their origins in ecstasies which might have been.
There is something in the unselfish and self-sacrificing love of a brute, which goes directly to the heart of him who has had frequent occasion to test the paltry friendship and gossamer fidelity of mere Man.
In our endeavors to recall to memory something long forgotten, we often find ourselves upon the very verge of remembrance, without being able, in the end, to remember.
In one case out of a hundred a point is excessively discussed because it is obscure; in the ninety-nine remaining it is obscure because it is excessively discussed.
The agony of my soul found vent in one loud, long and final scream of despair.
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor, Shall be lifted — Nevermore!
The eye, like a shattered mirror, multiplies the images of sorrow.
If a poem hasn't ripped apart your soul; you haven't experienced poetry.
Here I opened wide the door;— Darkness there, and nothing more.
All suffering originates from craving, from attachment, from desire.
Imperceptibly the love of these discords grew upon me as my love of music grew stronger.
I am a writer. Therefore, I am not sane.
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.
I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell.
I am above the weakness of seeking to establish a sequence of cause and effect, between the disaster and the atrocity.
The depth lies in the valleys where we seek her, and not upon the mountain-tops where she is found.
Books, indeed, were his sole luxuries.
I call to mind flatness and dampness; and then all is madness - the madness of a memory which busies itself among forbidden things.
I found him well educated, with unusual powers of mind, but infected with misanthropy, and subject to perverse moods of alternate enthusiasm and melancholy.
Even for those to whom life and death are equal jests. There are some things that are still held in respect.
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.
The truth is, I am heartily sick of this life and of the nineteenth century in general. I am convinced that every thing is going wrong.
And now have I not told you that what you mistake for madness is but over-acuteness of the senses?
To vilify a great man is the readiest way in which a little man can himself attain greatness.
We had always dwelled together, beneath a tropical sun, in the Valley of the Many Colored Grass.
It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain; but once conceived, it haunted me day and night.
Marking a book is literally an experience of your differences or agreements with the author. It is the highest respect you can pay him.
For my own part, I have never had a thought which I could not set down in words, with even more distinctness than that with which I conceived it.
I continued, as was my wont, to smile in his face, and he did not perceive that my smile now was at the thought of his immolation.
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