Inspiring Insights: A Collection of Edgar Allan Poe Quotes

"Deep in earth my love is lying and I must weep alone."

- Edgar Allan Poe

"And all I loved, I loved alone."

- Edgar Allan Poe

"The death of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world."

- Edgar Allan Poe

"We loved with a love that was more than love… With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven coveted her and me."

- Edgar Allan Poe

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

- Edgar Allan Poe

"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

"Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before."

- Edgar Allan Poe

"We loved with a love that was more than love."

- Edgar Allan Poe

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

- Edgar Allan Poe

"But we loved with a love that was more than love— I and my Annabel Lee—"

- Edgar Allan Poe

"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."

- Edgar Allan Poe

"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."

- Edgar Allan Poe

"Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality."

- Edgar Allan Poe

"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."

- 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

"It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain; but once conceived, it haunted me day and night."

- Edgar Allan Poe

"There are moments when, even to the sober eye of Reason, the world of our sad Humanity may assume the semblance of a Hell -- but the imagination of man is no Carathis, to explore with impunity its every cavern."

- 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

"And so being young and dipped in folly I fell in love with melancholy."

- Edgar Allan Poe

"I was never really insane except upon occasions when my heart was touched."

- Edgar Allan Poe

"Nothing is more clear than that every plot, worth the name, must be elaborated to its dénouement before any thing be attempted with the pen."

- Edgar Allan Poe

"All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream."

- Edgar Allan Poe

"Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary..."

- Edgar Allan Poe

"Never to suffer would never to have been blessed."

- Edgar Allan Poe

"Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night."

- Edgar Allan Poe

"For passionate love is still divine / I lov’d her as an angel might / With ray of the all living light / Which blazes upon Edis’ shrine."

- Edgar Allan Poe

"Beauty is the sole legitimate province of the poem."

- Edgar Allan Poe

"Because I feel that, in the Heavens above, The angels, whispering to one another, Can find, among their burning terms of love, None so devotional as that of ‘Mother.’"

- Edgar Allan Poe

"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?"

- Edgar Allan Poe

"I remained too much inside my head and ended up losing my mind."

- Edgar Allan Poe

"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."

- Edgar Allan Poe

"Deep in earth my love is lying And I must weep alone."

- Edgar Allan Poe

"You are mistaken; I know him well; he is both. As poet and mathematician, he would reason well; as mere mathematician, he could not have reasoned at all, and thus would have been at the mercy of the Prefect."

- Edgar Allan Poe

"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."

- Edgar Allan Poe

"It will be found, in fact, that the ingenious are always fanciful, and the truly imaginative never otherwise than analytic."

- Edgar Allan Poe

"Literature is the most noble of professions. In fact, it is about the only one fit for a man."

- Edgar Allan Poe

"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."

- Edgar Allan Poe

"There is no exquisite beauty… without some strangeness in the proportion."

- Edgar Allan Poe

"Sleep, those little slices of death — how I loathe them."

- Edgar Allan Poe

"Men have called me mad; but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence."

- Edgar Allan Poe

"True! - nervous - very, very nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad?"

- Edgar Allan Poe

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

- Edgar Allan Poe

"Melancholy is … the most legitimate of all the poetical tones."

- Edgar Allan Poe

"To die laughing must be the most glorious of all glorious deaths!"

- Edgar Allan Poe

"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."

- Edgar Allan Poe

"Yes, I now feel that it was then on that evening of sweet dreams—that the very first dawn of human love burst upon the icy night of my spirit. Since that period I have never seen nor heard your name without a shiver half of delight half of anxiety."

- Edgar Allan Poe

"For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams."

- Edgar Allan Poe

"I was never kinder to the old man than during the whole week before I killed him."

- Edgar Allan Poe

"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

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

- Edgar Allan Poe

"I felt that I breathed an atmosphere of sorrow."

- Edgar Allan Poe

"I wish I could write as mysterious as a cat."

- Edgar Allan Poe

"The most natural, and, consequently, the truest and most intense of the human affections are those which arise in the heart as if by electric sympathy."

- Edgar Allan Poe

"All religion, my friend, is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination, and poetry."

- Edgar Allan Poe

"And so being young and dipt in folly I fell in love with melancholy."

- Edgar Allan Poe

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

- Edgar Allan Poe

"Men have called me mad; but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence…"

- Edgar Allan Poe

"I have great faith in fools - self-confidence my friends will call it."

- Edgar Allan Poe

"Although I saw that the features of Ligeia were not of a classic regularity—although I perceived that her loveliness was indeed ‘exquisite,’ and felt that there was much of ‘strangeness’ pervading it, yet I have tried in vain to detect the irregularity and to trace home my own perception of ‘the strange.’"

- 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

"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."

- 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

"I smiled,—for what had I to fear?"

- Edgar Allan Poe

"Arousing from the most profound of 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

"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

"That which you mistake for madness is but an over acuteness o the senses"

- Edgar Allan Poe

"Invisible things are the only realities."

- Edgar Allan Poe

"I have no faith in human perfectibility. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity."

- Edgar Allan Poe

"I have great faith in fools — self-confidence my friends will call it."

- Edgar Allan Poe

"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."

- Edgar Allan Poe

"Yet mad I am not… and very surely do I not dream."

- Edgar Allan Poe

"To observe attentively is to remember distinctly."

- Edgar Allan Poe

"Whether people grow fat by joking, or whether there is something in fat itself which predisposes to a joke, I have never been quite able to determine…"

- Edgar Allan Poe

"I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity."

- Edgar Allan Poe

"We should bear in mind that, in general, it is the object of our newspapers rather to create a sensation – to make a point – than to further the cause of truth."

- Edgar Allan Poe

"That man is not truly brave who is afraid either to seem or to be, when it suits him, a coward."

- Edgar Allan Poe

"It was a freak of fancy in my friend… to be enamored of the night for her own sake; and into this bizarrerie, as into all his others, I quietly fell; giving myself up to his wild whims with a perfect abandon."

- Edgar Allan Poe

"Love like mine can never be gotten over."

- Edgar Allan Poe

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

- Edgar Allan Poe

"I was never really insane except upon occasions where my heart was touched."

- Edgar Allan Poe

"Convinced myself, I seek not to convince."

- Edgar Allan Poe

"The customs of the world are so many conventional follies."

- Edgar Allan Poe