Edgar Allan Poe Quotes

“I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.”

“If a poem hasn't ripped apart your soul; you haven't experienced poetry.”

Letter http://www.eapoe.org/works/letters/p4801040.htm to George W. Eveleth, Jan. 4, 1848.

“All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.”

Edgar Allan Poe book A Dream Within a Dream

"A Dream Within a Dream" (1849).
Context: You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

“Believe nothing you hear, and only one half that you see.”

Edgar Allan Poe book The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether

"The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether" (1845)

“Sleep. Those little slices of death. How I loathe them.”

“And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted — nevermore!”

Various forms of this quote are attributed to Poe, primarily by a title card in the movie A Nightmare on Elm Street 3, though there is no record of his having ever said it.
Misattributed

Edgar Allan Poe Quotes about the soul

“One night, returning home, much intoxicated, from one of my haunts about town, I fancied that the cat avoided my presence. I seized him; when, in his fright at my violence, he inflicted a slight wound upon my hand with his teeth. 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 fiber of my frame. I took from my waistcoat-pocket a penknife, opened it, grasped the poor beast by the throat, and deliberately cut one of its eyes from the socket!”

Stanza 18.
The Raven (1844)

“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?”

The Black Cat (1843)

“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".”

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?
The Black Cat (1843)

“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!”

Marginalia http://www.easylit.com/poe/comtext/prose/margin.shtml (November 1844)

“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.”

The Black Cat (1843)

Edgar Allan Poe book The Cask of Amontillado

"The Cask of Amontillado" (1846).

Edgar Allan Poe Quotes about love

“And so being young and dipped in folly, I fell in love with melancholy.”

“Sound loves to revel in a summer night.”

Edgar Allan Poe Al Aaraaf

Al Aaraaf (1829).

“I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea,
But we loved with a love that was more than love —
I and my Annabel Lee —”

Edgar Allan Poe Annabel Lee

St. 2.
Annabel Lee (1849)
Context: I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea,
But we loved with a love that was more than love —
I and my Annabel Lee —
With a love that the wingèd seraphs of Heaven
Coveted her and me.

“O, human love! thou spirit given,
On Earth, of all we hope in Heaven!”

Edgar Allan Poe Tamerlane

"Tamerlane", l. 177 (1827).

“Years of love have been forgot
In the hatred of a minute.”

“Object there was none. Passion there was none. I loved the old man. He had never wronged me. He had never given me insult. For his gold I had no desire. I think it was his eye! yes, it was this! One of his eyes resembled that of a vulture — a pale blue eye, with a film over it. Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold; and so by degrees — very gradually — I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye for ever.”

To M——— (1829), reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

“The best chess-player in Christendom may be little more than the best player of chess; but proficiency in whist implies capacity for success in all these more important undertakings where mind struggles with mind.”

The Tell-Tale Heart (1843)

Edgar Allan Poe: Trending quotes

Edgar Allan Poe book The Murders in the Rue Morgue

"The Murders in the Rue Morgue" (1841).

“Thou wouldst be loved?”

“We loved with a love that was more than love.”

then let thy heart From its present pathway part not! Being everything which now thou art, Be nothing which thou art not. So with the world thy gentle ways, Thy grace, thy more than beauty, Shall be an endless theme of praise, And love — a simple duty. " To Frances S. Osgood http://www.readbookonline.net/readOnLine/595/" (1845).

Edgar Allan Poe Annabel Lee

Source: Annabel Lee

Edgar Allan Poe Quotes

“From childhood's hour I have not been
As others were — I have not seen
As others saw —”

“Beauty is the sole legitimate province of the poem.”

" Alone http://gothlupin.tripod.com/valone.html", l. 1-8 (written 1829, published 1875). Context: 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 book The Philosophy of Composition

"The Philosophy of Composition" (published 1846).

“Man is an animal that diddles, and there is no animal that diddles but man.”

“You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;”

" Diddling: Considered As One Of The Exact Sciences http://www.classicreader.com/read.php/sid.6/bookid.1390/"; first published as "Raising the Wind" in Saturday Courier (1843-10-14).

Edgar Allan Poe book A Dream Within a Dream

“It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden lived whom you may know
By the name of Annabel Lee; —”

Edgar Allan Poe Annabel Lee

St. 1.
Annabel Lee (1849)
Context: It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden lived whom you may know
By the name of Annabel Lee; —
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.

“Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,”

“And now have I not told you that what you mistake for madness is but over-acuteness of the senses?”

Stanza 1.
The Raven (1844)
Context: 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.

“If you wish to forget anything on the spot, make a note that this thing is to be remembered.”

The Tell-Tale Heart (1843)
Context: And now have I not told you that what you mistake for madness is but over-acuteness of the senses? -- now, I say, there came to my ears a low, dull, quick sound, such as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton. I knew that sound too. It was the beating of the old man's heart. It increased my fury, as the beating of a drum stimulates the soldier into courage.

“As for myself, I am simply Hop-Frog, the jester — and this is my last jest.”

Marginalia http://www.easylit.com/poe/comtext/prose/margin.shtml (November 1844) Variant: If you wish to forget anything on the spot, make a note that this thing is to be remembered.

Edgar Allan Poe book Hop-Frog

"Hop-Frog" (1850).

“All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.”

“By a route obscure and lonely,
Haunted by ill angels only,”

Source: báseň A Dream Within a Dream

“Thy Naiad airs have brought me home
To the glory that was Greece
And the grandeur that was Rome.”

"Dreamland", st. 1 (1845).
Context: By a route obscure and lonely,
Haunted by ill angels only,
Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT,
On a black throne reigns upright,
I have reached these lands but newly
From an ultimate dim Thule —
From a wild weird clime that lieth, sublime,
Out of SPACE — out of TIME.

“And 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 to-day, or the agonies which are, have their origin in the ecstasies which might have been.”

"To Helen", st. 1-2 (1831).
Context: p>Helen, thy beauty is to me
Like those Nicean barks of yore,
That gently, o'er a perfumed sea,
The weary, wayworn wanderer bore
To his own native shore.On desperate seas long wont to roam,
Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,
Thy Naiad airs have brought me home
To the glory that was Greece
And the grandeur that was Rome.</p

Edgar Allan Poe book Berenice

"Berenice".

“Thy grace, thy more than beauty,
Shall be an endless theme of praise,
And love — a simple duty.”

“Thou wast that all to me, love,
For which my soul did pine —”

" To Frances S. Osgood http://www.readbookonline.net/readOnLine/595/" (1845). Context: Thou wouldst be loved? — then let thy heart From its present pathway part not! Being everything which now thou art, Be nothing which thou art not. So with the world thy gentle ways, Thy grace, thy more than beauty, Shall be an endless theme of praise, And love — a simple duty.

Edgar Allan Poe book To One in Paradise

"To One in Paradise", st. 1 (1834).
Context: Thou wast that all to me, love,
For which my soul did pine —
A green isle in the sea, love,
A fountain and a shrine,
All wreathed with fairy fruits and flowers,
And all the flowers were mine.

“I have reached these lands but newly
From an ultimate dim Thule —
From a wild weird clime that lieth, sublime,
Out of SPACE — out of TIME.”

“I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone —
And all I lov'd — I lov'd alone —”

“And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door.”

“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.”

Stanza 18.
The Raven (1844)

“In reading some books we occupy ourselves chiefly with the thoughts of the author; in perusing others, exclusively with our own.”

Poe stating his arguments that Maelzel's Chess-Player was a hoax. Maelzel's Chess-Player http://www.eapoe.org/works/essays/maelzel.htm, Southern Literary Journal (April 1836).

“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.”

Marginalia http://www.easylit.com/poe/comtext/prose/margin.shtml (November 1844)

Edgar Allan Poe book The Angel of the Odd

"The Angel of the Odd" (1850).

“To observe attentively is to remember distinctly.”

Edgar Allan Poe book The Murders in the Rue Morgue

"The Murders in the Rue Morgue" (1841).

“They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.”

“Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the Nightly shore —
Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore!”

" Eleonora http://www.classicreader.com/read.php/sid.6/bookid.9/" (1841).

“And when, amid no earthly moans,
Down, down that town shall settle hence,
Hell, rising from a thousand thrones,
Shall do it reverence.”

Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."
Stanza 8.
The Raven (1844)

Edgar Allan Poe The City in the Sea

St. 5.
The City in the Sea (1831)

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

Edgar Allan Poe book Tamerlane and Other Poems

" Imitation http://www.americanpoems.com/poets/poe/17481", Tamerlane and Other Poems (1827).

“Come! let the burial rite be read — the funeral song be sung! —
An anthem for the queenliest dead that ever died so young —
A dirge for her the doubly dead in that she died so young.”

Edgar Allan Poe Lenore

"Lenore", st. 1 (1831).

“Music, when combined with a pleasurable idea, is poetry; music without the idea is simply music; the idea without the music is prose from its very definitiveness.”

“TRUE! — nervous — very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad?”

"Letter to Mr. B — ".

“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?”

The Tell-Tale Heart (1843)

Edgar Allan Poe book The Premature Burial

"The Premature Burial" (1844).

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

“These fellows, knowing the extravagant gullibility of the age, set their wits to work in the imagination of improbable possibilities — of odd accidents, as they term them; but to a reflecting intellect (like mine," I added, in parenthesis, putting my forefinger unconsciously to the side of my nose,) "to a contemplative understanding such as I myself possess, it seems evident at once that the marvelous increase of late in these 'odd accidents' is by far the oddest accident of all. For my own part, I intend to believe nothing henceforward that has anything of the 'singular' about it.”

Marginalia http://www.easylit.com/poe/comtext/prose/margin.shtml (November 1844)

“All religion, my friend, is simply evolved out of chicanery, fear, greed, imagination and poetry!”

"The Angel Of The Odd: An Extravaganza".

“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.”

Sometimes quoted as "All religion, my friend, is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination and poetry" According to John A. Joyce's much-criticized biography Edgar Allen Poe (1901), this was said by Poe to William Barton. Disputed Source: Google Books link https://books.google.com/books?id=_cdEAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=John+Alexander+Joyce+poe&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CBwQ6AEwAGoVChMIsuLtsoXUyAIVVSqICh2cqAI_#v=onepage&q=%22chicanery%2C%20fear%22&f=false

“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.”

Marginalia http://www.easylit.com/poe/comtext/prose/margin.shtml (November 1844)

“"Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's Plutonian shore!
Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!
Leave my loneliness unbroken! — quit the bust above my door!
Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!"
Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."”

The Tell-Tale Heart (1843)

“Thus I pacified Psyche and kissed her,
And tempted her out of her gloom.”

Stanza 17.
The Raven (1844)

Edgar Allan Poe Ulalume

St. 8.
Ulalume (1847)

“Thank Heaven! the crisis —
The danger is past,
And the lingering illness
Is over at last —
And the fever called "Living"
Is conquered at last.”

Edgar Allan Poe For Annie

"For Annie", st. 1 (1849).

“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.”

“Few persons can be made to believe that it is not quite an easy thing to invent a method of secret writing which shall baffle investigation. Yet it may be roundly asserted that human ingenuity cannot concoct a cipher which human ingenuity cannot resolve.”

The Black Cat (1843)

“Convinced myself, I seek not to convince.”

" A Few Words on Secret Writing http://www.lfchosting.com/eapoe/works/essays/fwsw0741.htm" in Graham's Magazine (July 1841).

Edgar Allan Poe book Berenice

"Berenice" (1835).

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

“This—all this—was in the olden
Time long ago.”

Stanza 3.
The Raven (1844)

Edgar Allan Poe The Haunted Palace

"The Haunted Palace" (1839), st. 2.

“During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country, and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher.”

Edgar Allan Poe book The Fall of the House of Usher

"The Fall of the House of Usher" (1839).

“I would define, in brief, the Poetry of words as the Rhythmical Creation of Beauty. Its sole arbiter is taste. With the intellect or with the conscience, it has only collateral relations. Unless incidentally, it has no concern whatever either with duty or with truth.”

“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.”

The Poetic Principle (1850)

Edgar Allan Poe book The Bells

"The Bells", st. 1 (1849).

“Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December;
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.”

“The skies they were ashen and sober;
The leaves they were crisped and sere —
The leaves they were withering and sere;
It was night in the lonesome October
Of my most immemorial year.”

Stanza 2.
The Raven (1844)

Edgar Allan Poe Ulalume

St. 1.
Ulalume (1847)

“I have sometimes amused myself by endeavouring to fancy what would be the fate of an individual gifted, or rather accursed, with an intellect very far superior to that of his race. Of course he would be conscious of his superiority; nor could he (if otherwise constituted as man is) help manifesting his consciousness. Thus he would make himself enemies at all points. And since his opinions and speculations would widely differ from those of all mankind — that he would be considered a madman is evident. How horribly painful such a condition! Hell could invent no greater torture than that of being charged with abnormal weakness on account of being abnormally strong.In like manner, nothing can be clearer than that a very generous spirit — truly feeling what all merely profess — must inevitably find itself misconceived in every direction — its motives misinterpreted. Just as extremeness of intelligence would be thought fatuity, so excess of chivalry could not fail of being looked upon as meanness in the last degree — and so on with other virtues. This subject is a painful one indeed. That individuals have so soared above the plane of their race is scarcely to be questioned; but, in looking back through history for traces of their existence, we should pass over all the biographies of the "good and the great," while we search carefully the slight records of wretches who died in prison, in Bedlam, or upon the gallows.”

“I need scarcely observe that a poem deserves its title only inasmuch as it excites, by elevating the soul. The value of the poem is in the ratio of this elevating excitement. But all excitements are, through a psychal necessity, transient.”

Marginalia http://www.easylit.com/poe/comtext/prose/margin.shtml (November 1844)