Edgar Poe Quotes & Sayings

When a madman appears thoroughly sane, indeed, it is high time to put him in a straight jacket. — Edgar Allan Poe

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

I will, therefore, take occasion to assert that the higher powers of the reflective intellect are more decidedly and more usefully tasked by the unostentatious game of draughts than by a the elaborate frivolity of chess. — Edgar Allan Poe

Literature has been part of my life for as long as I can remember. I can't think back before a time that I didn't love writing and reading. When I was really young, my mother would read poems to me. I loved Edgar Allan Poe - I am sure I didn't understand it, but I loved it. — Alexandra Adornetto

In his opinion the powers of the intellect held intimate connection with the capabilities of the stomach. — Edgar Allan Poe

Hear the mellow wedding bells, Golden bells! What a world of happiness their harmony foretells Through the balmy air of night How they ring out their delight! From the molten golden notes, And all in tune What a liquid ditty floats To the turtle-dove that listens while she gloats On the moon! — Edgar Allan Poe

I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country, and at length found myself, as the shades of evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher. — Edgar Allan Poe

Boston: Their hotels are bad. Their pumpkin pies are delicious. Their poetry is not so good. — Edgar Allan Poe

I have not only labored solely for the benefit of others (receiving for myself a miserable pittance), but have been forced to model my thoughts at the will of men whose imbecility was evident to all but themselves — Edgar Allan Poe

The rudiment of verse may, possibly, be found in the spondee. — 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

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

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

Very suddenly there came back to my soul motion and sound - the tumultuous motion of the heart, and, in my ears, the sound of its beating. Then a pause in which all is blank. Then again sound, and motion, and touch - a tingling sensation pervading my frame. Then the mere consciousness of existence, without thought - a condition which lasted long. Then, very suddenly, thought, and shuddering terror, and earnest endeavor to comprehend my true state. Then a strong desire to lapse into insensibility. — Edgar Allan Poe

Dreams are the eraser dust I blow off my page.
They fade into the emptiness, another dark gray day.
Dreams are only memories of the plans I had back then.
Dreams are eraser dust and now I use a pen. — Edgar Allan Poe

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. — Edgar Allan Poe

A dirge for her the doubly dead in that she died so young. — Edgar Allan Poe

To look at a star by glances - to view it in a side-long way, by turning toward it the exterior portions of the retina (more susceptible of feeble impressions of light than the interior), is to behold the star distinctly - is to have the best appreciation of its lustre - a lustre which grows dim just in proportion as we turn our vision fully upon it. — Edgar Allan Poe

Shadows of Shadows passing... It is now 1831... and as always, I am absorbed with a delicate thought. It is how poetry has indefinite sensations to which end, music is an essential, since the comprehension of sweet sound is our most indefinite conception. Music, when combined with a pleasurable idea, is poetry. Music without the idea is simply music. Without music or an intriguing idea, color becomes pallour, man becomes carcass, home becomes catacomb, and the dead are but for a moment motionless. — Edgar Allan Poe

Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality. — Edgar Allan Poe

Coincidences, in general, are great stumbling-blocks in the way of that class of thinkers who have been educated to know nothing of the theory of probabilities
that theory to which the most glorious objects of human research are indebted for the most glorious of illustration. — 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

But Psyche uplifting her finger said: Sadly this star I mistrust — Edgar Allan Poe

All religion, my friend, is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination, and poetry. — Edgar Allan Poe

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. — Edgar Allan Poe

It was well said of a certain German book that 'er lasst sich nicht lesen" - it does not permit itself to be read. — Edgar Allan Poe

by the five corners of my beard! — Edgar Allan Poe

But she died; and with my own hands I bore her to the tomb; and I laughed with a long and bitter laugh as I found no traces of the first in the channel where I laid the second. — Edgar Allan Poe

And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,
That I scarce was sure I heard you - here I opened wide the door;
Darkness there, and nothing more. — Edgar Allan Poe

I am walking like a bewitched corpse, with the certainty of being eaten by the infinite, of being annulled by the only existing Absurd. — Edgar Allan Poe

Who entereth herein, a conqueror hath bin; Who slayeth the dragon, the shield he shall win. — Edgar Allan Poe

The true genius shudders at incompleteness - imperfection - and usually prefers silence to saying the something which is not everything that should be said. — Edgar Allan Poe

Simplicity itself. Skin, debone, demarrow, scarify, melt, render down and destroy. Every adjective that counted, every verb that moved, every metaphor that weighed more than a mosquito
out! Every simile that would have made sub-moron's mouth twitch
gone! Any aside that explained the two-bit philosophy of a first-rate writer
lost!
Every story slenderized, starved, bluepenciled, leeched and bled white, resembled every other story. Twain read like Poe read Shakespeare read like Dostoevsky read like
in the finale
Edgar Guest. Every word of more than three syllables had been razored. Every image that demanded so much as one instant's attention
shot dead. — Ray Bradbury

The winters in the latitude of Sullivan's Island are seldom very severe, and in the fall of the year it is a rare event indeed — Edgar Allan Poe

For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise but i feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee. — Edgar Allan Poe

It would be mockery to call such dreariness heaven at all. — Edgar Allan Poe

Art is to look at not to criticize. — Edgar Allan Poe

Invisible things are the only realities. — Edgar Allan Poe

One half of the pleasure experienced at a theatre arises from the spectator's sympathy with the rest of the audience, and, especially from his belief in their sympathy with him. — Edgar Allan Poe

For her whom in life thou dids't abhor, in death thou shalt adore — Edgar Allan Poe

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. — 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

I Dwelt alone
In a world of moan,
And my soul was a stagnant tide,
Till the fair and gentle Eulalie became my blushing bride-
Till the yellow-haired young Eulalie became my smiling bride
Ah, less-less bright
The stars of night
Than the eyes of the radiant girl!
And never a flake
That the vapor can make
With the moon-tints of purple and pearl,
Can vie with the modest Eulalie's most unregarded curl-
Can vie compare with the bright-eyed Eulalie's most humble and careless curl

Now Doubt-now Pain
Come never again,
For her soul gives me sigh for sigh,
And all day long
Shine, bright and strong,
Astarte within the sky,
While ever to her dear Eulalie upturns her matron eye-
While ever to her young Eulalie upturns her violet eye. — Edgar Allan Poe

I must perish in this deplorable folly. Thus, thus, and not otherwise, shall I be lost. I dread the events of the future, not in themselves, but in their results. I shudder at the thought of any, even the most trivial, incident, which may operate upon this intolerable agitation of soul. I have, indeed, no abhorrence of danger, except in its absolute effect-in terror. In this unnerved-in this pitiable condition-I feel that the period will sooner or later arrive when I must abandon life and reason together, in some struggle with the grim phantasm, FEAR. — Edgar Allan Poe

Here the vast bed of waters, seamed and scarred into a thousand conflicting channels, burst suddenly into phrensied convulsion-heaving, boiling, hissing-gyrating in gigantic and innumerable vortices, and all whirling and plunging on to the eastward with a rapidity which water never elsewhere assumes except in precipitous descents. — Edgar Allan Poe

A poem deserves its title only inasmuch as it excites, by elevating the soul. — Edgar Allan Poe

In death - no! even in the grave all is not lost. Else there is no immortality for man. Arousing from the most profound slumbers, we break the gossamer web of some dream. Yet in a second afterward, (so frail may that web have been) we remember not that we have dreamed. — 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. — Edgar Allan Poe

[The daguerreotype] itself must undoubtedly be regarded as the most important, and perhaps the most extraordinary triumph of modern science. — Edgar Allan Poe

The viol, the violet, and the vine.
Resignedly beneath the sky — Edgar Allan Poe

Keeping time, time, time, In a sort of Runic rhyme, To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells From the bells, bells, bells, bells, Bells, bells, bells
From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells. — Edgar Allan Poe

I would say that Edgar Allan Poe, [Georges] Perec, Thomas Pynchon, and [Jorge Luis] Borges are all boy-writers. These are writers who take ... a kind of demonic joy in writing. — Paul Auster

And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor. — Edgar Allan Poe

At midnight, in the month of June, I stand beneath the mystic moon. An opiate vapor, dewy, dim, Exhales from out her golden rim, And, softly dripping, drop by drop, Upon the quiet mountain top, — Edgar Allan Poe

Decorum
that bug-bear which deters so many from bliss until the opportunity for bliss has forever gone by. — Edgar Allan Poe

If we examine a work of ordinary art, by means of a powerful microscope, all traces of resemblance to nature will disappear - but the closest scrutiny of the photogenic drawing discloses only a more absolute truth, a more perfect identity of aspect with the thing represented. — Edgar Allan Poe

All in vain; because Death, in approaching him had stalked with his black shadow before him, and enveloped the victim. And it was the mournful influence of the unperceived shadow that caused him to feel - although he neither saw nor heard - to feel the presence of my head within the room. — Edgar Allan Poe

If any ambitious man have a fancy to revolutionize, at one effort, the universal world of human thought, human opinion, and human sentiment ... — Edgar Allan Poe

No one should brave the underworld alone. — Poe

Yet mad I am not...and very surely do I not dream. — 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

Tis some visiter entreating entrance at my chamber door — Edgar Allan Poe

Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore ... — Edgar Allan Poe

I hold that a long poem does not exist. I maintain that the phrase, "a long poem," is simply a flat contradiction in terms. — Edgar Allan Poe

I AM come of a race noted for vigor of fancy and ardor of passion. Men have called me mad; but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence
whether much that is glorious
whether all that is profound
does not spring from disease of thought
from moods of mind exalted at the expense of the general intellect. They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night. In their gray visions they obtain glimpses of eternity, and thrill, in waking, to find that they have been upon the verge of the great secret. In snatches, they learn something of the wisdom which is of good, and more of the mere knowledge which is of evil. They penetrate, however, rudderless or compassless into the vast ocean of the "light ineffable", and again, like the adventures of the Nubian geographer, "agressi sunt mare tenebrarum, quid in eo esset exploraturi".
We will say then, that I am mad. — Edgar Allan Poe

Luchesi cannot tell amontillado from a sherry — Edgar Allan Poe

She was a maiden of rarest beauty, and not more lovely than full of glee. And evil was the hour when she saw, and loved, and wedded the painter. He, passionate, studious, austere, and having already a bride in his Art; she a maiden of rarest beauty, and not more lovely than full of glee; all light and smiles, and frolicsome as the young fawn; loving and cherishing all things; hating only the Art which was her rival; — Edgar Allan Poe

Beauty is the sole legitimate province of the poem. — Edgar Allan Poe

A lie travels round the world while truth is putting her boots on. — Edgar Allan Poe

He knocked absurdly on the skull like a man impatient for a door to open. His eyes glazed over. He appeared to be in the grasp of something beyond the reach of ordinary mortals.
'Time is slowing,' he said in a leaden voice. 'Each moment grows and fattens like a drop of rain on a window sash, waiting to fall. — Norman Lock

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

Children are never too tender to be whipped. Like tough beefsteaks, the more you beat them, the more tender they become. — Edgar Allan Poe

Ah, bear in mind this garden was enchanted! — Edgar Allan Poe

The most expuisite beauty has strangeness in its proportions ... Ligeia — Edgar Allan Poe

As an individual, I myself feel impelled to fancy ... a limitless succession of Universes ... Each exists, apart and independently, in the bosom of its proper and particular God. — Edgar Allan Poe

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

The disease which had thus entombed the lady in the maturity of youth, had left, as usual in all maladies of a strictly cataleptical character, the mockery of a faint blush upon the bosom and the face, and that suspiciously lingering smile upon the lip which is so terrible in death — Edgar Allan Poe

FAIR river! in thy bright, clear flow Of crystal, wandering water, Thou art an emblem of the glow Of beauty - the unhidden heart - The playful maziness of art In old Alberto's daughter; But when within thy wave she looks - Which glistens then, and trembles - Why, then, the prettiest of brooks Her worshipper resembles; For in his heart, as in thy stream, Her image deeply lies - His heart which trembles at the beam Of her soul-searching eyes. — Edgar Allan Poe

Yes, Heaven is thine; but this
Is a world of sweets and sours;
Our flowers are merely - flowers,
And the shadow of thy perfect bliss
Is the sunshine of ours. — Edgar Allan Poe

And I lie so composedly, Now in my bed (Knowing her love) That you fancy me dead - And I rest so contentedly, Now in my bed, (With her love at my breast) That you fancy me dead - That you shudder to look at me. Thinking me dead. But my heart it is brighter Than all of the many Stars in the sky, For it sparkles with Annie - It glows with the light Of the love of my Annie - With the thought of the light Of the eyes of my Annie. — Edgar Allan Poe

In the sepulchre there by the sea,
In her tomb by the sounding sea. — Edgar Allan Poe

The convex surface of any segment of a sphere is, to the entire surface of the sphere itself, as the versed sine of the segment to the diameter of the sphere. — Edgar Allan Poe

To friends above, from fiends below, the indignant ghost is riven-
From Hell unto a high estate far up within the Heaven-
From grief and groan, to a golden throne, beside the King of Heaven. — Edgar Allan Poe

A judge at common law may be an ordinary man; a good judge of a carpet must be a genius. — Edgar Allan Poe

You call it hope - that fire of fire!
It is but agony of desire. — Edgar Allan Poe

Nothing further then he uttered--not a feather then he fluttered-- Till I scarcely more than muttered, "Other friends have flown before-- On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown before." Then the bird said, "Nevermore. — Edgar Allan Poe

By undue profundity, we perplex and enfeeble thought; and it is possible to make even Venus herself vanish from the firmament by a scrutiny too sustained, too concentrated, or too direct.
The Murders in the Rue Morgue — Edgar Allan Poe

I believe, indeed, that what I could not refrain from saying to him on this head had the effect of inducing him to push on. While, therefore, I cannot but lament the most unfortunate and bloody events which immediately arose from my advice, I must still be allowed to feel some degree of gratification at having been instrumental, however remotely, in opening to the eye of science one of the most intensely exciting secrets which has ever engrossed its attention. — Edgar Allan Poe

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. — Edgar Allan Poe

Deep in earth my love is lying
And I must weep alone. — Edgar Allan Poe

Imperceptibly the love of these discords grew upon me as my love of music grew stronger. — Edgar Allan Poe

It was many and many a year ago, in a kingdom by the sea ... — Edgar Allan Poe

Years of love have been forgot, In the hatred of a minute. — Edgar Allan Poe

The raven of Edgar Allan Poe has a halo that he extinguishes from time to time

("Spanish Generosity") — Max Jacob

Books are almost as individual as friends. There is no earthly use in laying down general laws about them. Some meet the needs of one person, and some of another; and each person should beware of the booklover's besetting sin, of what Mr. Edgar Allan Poe calls 'the mad pride of intellectuality,' taking the shape of arrogant pity for the man who does not like the same kind of books. — Theodore Roosevelt

enough to pay the full Amontillado price without consulting — Edgar Allan Poe

I have, indeed, no abhorrence of danger, except in its absolute effect - in terror. — Edgar Allan Poe

In the one instance, the dreamerloses sight of this object in a wilderness of deductions and suggestionsuntilhe finds the incitamentum, or first cause of his musings, ... forgotten. In my case, the primary object was invariably frivolous, although assuming, through the medium of my distempered vision, a refracted and unreal importance. — Edgar Allan Poe

I am excessively slothful, and wonderfully industrious-by fits. There are epochs when any kind of mental exercise is torture, and when nothing yields me pleasure but the solitary communion with the 'mountains & the woods'-the 'altars' of Byron. I have thus rambled and dreamed away whole months, and awake, at last, to a sort of mania for composition. Then I scribble all day, and read all night, so long as the disease endures. — Edgar Allan Poe

After reading Edgar Allan Poe. Something the critics have not noticed: a new literary world pointing to the literature of the 20th Century. Scientific miracles, fables on the pattern A+ B, a clear-sighted, sickly literature. No more poetry but analytic fantasy. Something monomaniacal. Things playing a more important part than people; love giving away to deductions and other forms of ideas, style, subject and interest. The basis of the novel transferred from the heart to the head, from the passion to the idea, from the drama to the denouement. — Jules De Goncourt