Edgar Allan Poe Quotes

The teeth!—the teeth!—they were here, and there, and everywhere, and visibly and palpably before me; long, narrow, and excessively white, with the pale lips writhing about them, as in the very moment of their first terrible development.
Edgar Allan Poe
To muse for long unwearied hours with my attention riveted to some frivolous device upon the margin, or in the typography of a book — to become absorbed for the better part of a summer's day in a quaint shadow falling aslant upon the tapestry, or upon the floor — to lose myself for an entire night in watching the steady flame of a lamp, or the embers of a fire — to dream away whole days over the perfume of a flower — to repeat monotonously some common word, until the sound, by dint of frequent repetition, ceased to convey any idea whatever to the mind — to lose all sense of motion or physical existence in a state of absolute bodily quiescence long and obstinately persevered in — Such were a few of the most common and least pernicious vagaries induced by a condition of the mental faculties, not, indeed, altogether unparalleled, but certainly bidding defiance to any thing like analysis or explanation.
Edgar Allan Poe
The grandeur that was Rome.
Edgar Allan Poe
In efforts to soar above our nature we invariably fall below it.
Edgar Allan Poe
Of puns it has been said that those most dislike who are least able to utter them.
Edgar Allan Poe
Man's real life is happy chiefly because he is ever expecting that it soon will be so.
Edgar Allan Poe
With me poetry has not been a purpose but a passion.
Edgar Allan Poe
Of puns it has been said that those most dislike who are least able to utter them.
Edgar Allan Poe
Man's real life is happy chiefly because he is ever expecting that it soon will be so.
Edgar Allan Poe
With me poetry has not been a purpose but a passion.
Edgar Allan Poe
Once upon a midnight dreary while I pondered weak and weary Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore.
Edgar Allan Poe
On desperate seas long wont to roam Thy hyacinth hair they classic face Thy naiad airs have brought me home To the glory that was Greece And the grandeur that was Rome.
Edgar Allan Poe
Man's real life is happy chiefly because he is ever expecting that it soon will be so.
Edgar Allan Poe
The glory that was Greece.
Edgar Allan Poe
And the Raven never flitting Still is sitting still is sitting On the pallid bust of Pallas Just above my chamber door And his eyes have all the seeming Of a demon's that is dreaming And the lamplight o'er him streaming Throws his shadow on the floor And my soul from out that shadow That lies floating on the floor Shall be lifted - nevermore.
Edgar Allan Poe
Never to suffer would have been never to have been blessed.
Edgar Allan Poe
Let him talk," said Dupin, who had not thought it necessary to reply. "Let him discourse; it will ease his conscience, I a satisfied with having defeated him in his own castle.
Edgar Allan Poe
Fill with mingled cream and amber, I will drain that glass again.Such hilarious visions clamber Through the chamber of my brain —Quaintest thoughts — queerest fancies Come to life and fade away;What care I how time advances? I am drinking ale today.
Edgar Allan Poe
But, for myself, the Earth’s records had taught me to look for widest ruin as the price of highest civilization.
Edgar Allan Poe
I was cautious in what I said before the young lady; for I could not be sure that she was sane; and, in fact, there was a certain restless brilliancy about her eyes that half led me to imagine she was not.
Edgar Allan Poe
I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell. How, then, am I mad?
Edgar Allan Poe
I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.
Edgar Allan Poe
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...
Edgar Allan Poe
Ceux qui revent eveilles ont conscience de 1000 choses qui echapent a ceux qui ne revent qu'endormis.The one who has day dream are aware of 1000 things that the one who dreams only when he sleeps will never understand.(it sounds better in french, I do what I can with my translation...)
Edgar Allan Poe
A man's grammar, like Caesar's wife, should not only be pure, but above suspicion of impurity.
Edgar Allan Poe
In criticism, I will be bold, and as sternly, absolutely just with friend and foe. From this purpose nothing shall turn me.
Edgar Allan Poe
Enough," he said; "the cough is a mere nothing; it will not kill me. I shall not die of a cough." "True - true," I replied;
Edgar Allan Poe
Ah, Death, the spectre which sate at all feasts! How often, Monos, did we lose ourselves in speculations upon its nature! How mysteriously did it act as a check to human bliss - saying unto it "thus far, and no farther!
Edgar Allan Poe
It is evident that we are hurrying onward to some exciting knowledge—some never-to-be-imparted secret, whose attainment is destruction.
Edgar Allan Poe
You are rich, respected, admired, beloved; you are happy, as once I was. 
Edgar Allan Poe
Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore.
Edgar Allan Poe
Every moment of the nightForever changing placesAnd they put out the star-lightWith the breath from their pale faces
Edgar Allan Poe
Deep in earth my love is lyingAnd I must weep alone.
Edgar Allan Poe
Never to suffer would never to have been blessed.
Edgar Allan Poe
For eyes we have no models in the remotely antique.
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
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
All that we see and seem is but a dream within a dream.
Edgar Allan Poe
From the dim regions beyond the mountains at the upper end of our encircled domain, there crept out a narrow and deep river, brighter than all save the eyes of Eleonora; and, winding stealthily about in mazy courses, it passed away, at length, through a shadowy gorge, among hills still dimmer than those whence it had issued. We called it the "River of Silence"; for there seemed to be a hushing influence in its flow. No murmur arose from its bed, and so gently it wandered along, that the pearly pebbles upon which we loved to gaze, far down within its bosom, stirred not at all, but lay in a motionless content, each in its own old station, shining on gloriously forever.
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
There are few persons who have not, at some period of their lives, amused themselves in retracing the steps by which particular conclusions of their own minds have been attained. The occupation is often full of interest and he who attempts it for the first time is astonished by the apparently illimitable distance and incoherence between the starting-point and the goal.
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
The principle of vis inertiae (...) seems to be identical in physics and metaphysics. It is not more true in the former, that a large body is with more difficulty set in motion than a smaller one, and that its subsequent momentum is commensurate with this difficulty, than it is, in the latter, that intellects of the vaster capacity, while more forcible, more constant, and more eventful in their movements than those of inferior grade, are yet the less readily moved, and more embarrassed, and full of hesitation in the first few steps of their progress
Edgar Allan Poe
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
Be nothing which thou art not
Edgar Allan Poe
To conceive the horror of my sensations is, I presume, utterly impossible; yet a curiosity to penetrate the mysteries of these awful regions predominates even over my despair, and will reconcile me to the most hideous aspect of death.
Edgar Allan Poe
And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain Thrilled me- filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before; So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating, "'Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door- Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door;- This it is, and nothing more.
Edgar Allan Poe
I have graven it within the hills, and my vengeance upon the dust within the rock.
Edgar Allan Poe
I blush, I burn, I shudder, while I pen the damnable atrocity.
Edgar Allan Poe
This apartment, which you no doubt profanely suppose to be the shop of Will Wimble the undertaker --a man whom we know not, and whose plebeian appellation has never before this night thwarted our royal ears --this apartment, I say, is the Dais-Chamber of our Palace, devoted to the councils of our kingdom, and to other sacred and lofty purposes.
Edgar Allan Poe
To be thoroughly conversant with Man’s heart, is to take our final lesson in the iron-clasped volume of Despair
Edgar Allan Poe
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
Even with the utterly lost, to whom life and death are equally jests, there are matters of which no jest can be made.
Edgar Allan Poe
Believe nothing you hear, and only one half that you see.
Edgar Allan Poe
And thus, as a closer and still closer intimacy admitted me more unreservedly into recesses if his spirit, the more bitterly did I perceive the futility of all attempt at cheering a mind from which darkness, as if an inherent positive quality, poured forth upon all objects of the moral and physical universe in one unceasing radiation of gloom.
Edgar Allan Poe
The scariest monsters are the ones that lurk within our souls...
Edgar Allan Poe
I have before suggested that a genuine blackguard is never without a pocket-handkerchief.
Edgar Allan Poe
There are some secrets which do not permit themselves to be told. Men die nightly in their beds, wringing the hands of ghostly confessors, and looking them piteously in the eyes — die with despair of heart and convulsion of throat, on account of the hideousness of mysteries which will not suffer themselves to be revealed.
Edgar Allan Poe
It all depends on the robber's knowledge of the loser's knowledge of the robber. - Daupin
Edgar Allan Poe
That single thought is enough. The impulse increases to a wish, the wish to a desire, the desire to an uncontrollable longing, and the longing (to the deep regret and mortification of the speaker, and in defiance of all consequences,) is indulged.
Edgar Allan Poe