Edgar Allan Poe Quotes

“Yet mad I am not...and very surely do I not dream.”

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

“Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”

“Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore...”

“Leave my loneliness unbroken”

“Who has not, a hundred times, found himself committing a vile or a silly action for no other reason than because he knows he should not?”

“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...”

“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.”

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

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

“I smiled,—for what had I to fear?”

“For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams”

“Have we not a perpetual inclination, in the teeth of our best judgment, to violate that which is Law, merely because we understand it to be such?”

“But our love it was stronger by far than the love Of those who were older than we— Of many far wiser than we— And neither the angels in Heaven above Nor the demons down under the sea Can ever dissever my soul from the soul”

“A million candles have burned themselves out. Still I read on.”

“But we loved with a love that was more than love, I and my Annabel Lee.”

“There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart - an unredeemed dreariness of thought which no goading of the imagination could torture into aught of the sublime.”

“And then there stole into my fancy, like a rich musical note, the thought of what sweet rest there must be in the grave.”

“Science has its place in man’s search for understanding, but science and the imagination have tended to bifurcate in the modern world; only the true poetic intellect can end this long-established dualism.”

“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.”

“You will observe that the stories told are all about money-seekers, not about money-finders.”

“How they scream out their affright!”

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

“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.”

Feel a glory in so rolling On the human heart a stone

“Thrilled me—filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;”

“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.”

“I was deeply interested in the little family history which he detailed to me with all that candor which a Frenchman indulges whenever mere self is the theme.”

“That is another of your odd notions,” said the Prefect, who had a fashion of calling every thing “odd” that was beyond his comprehension, and thus lived amid an absolute legion of “oddities.”

“I call to mind flatness and dampness; and then all is madness - the madness of a memory which busies itself among forbidden things.”

“In the deepest slumber-no! In delirium-no! In a swoon-no! In death-no! even in the grave all is not lost.”

“As a poet and as a mathematician, he would reason well; as a mere mathematician, he could not have reasoned at all.”

“What a tale their terror tells.”

“How we shiver with affright.”

What a horror they outpour

Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn, It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore –

Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning

To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom’s core;

“Be that word our sign in parting, bird or fiend!” I shrieked, upstarting

And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor Shall be lifted – nevermore

From my books surcease of sorrow – sorrow for the lost Lenore – For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore –

In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore;

“Doubtless,” said I, “what it utters is its only stock and store Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster

“Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil! – prophet still, if bird or devil! – Whether Tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore,

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,

“Get thee back into the tempest and the Night’s Plutonian shore!

Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer Swung by Seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor.

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

Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling, By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore,

“I smiled—for what had I to fear?”

“And this I did for seven long nights—every night just at midnight—but I found the eye always closed; and so it was impossible to do the work; for it was not the old man who vexed me, but his Evil Eye.”

“I knew what the old man felt, and pitied him, although I chuckled at heart.”

“And every night, about midnight, I turned the latch of his door and opened it – oh so gently!”

“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.”

“A watch’s minute hand moves more quickly than did mine.”

“It was a low, dull, quick sound – much such a sound as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton.”

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

″ Almighty God!—no, no! They heard!—they suspected!—they knew!—they were making a mockery of my horror!—this I thought, and this I think.”

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

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

“The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as best I could; but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge.”

“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.”

″‘Come,’ I said, with decision, ‘we will go back; your health is precious.‘”

“It was about dusk, one evening during the supreme madness of the carnival season, that I encountered my friend.”

″‘I shall not die of a cough.’ ‘True – true,’ I replied.”

“For the half of a century no mortal has disturbed them.”

“A moment more and I had fettered him to the granite.”

“In painting and gemmary, Fortunato, like his countrymen, was a quack–but in the matter of old wines he was sincere.”

“Ha! ha! ha!–he! he!–a very good joke indeed–an excellent jest. We shall have many a rich laugh about it at the palazzo–he! he! he!–over our wine–he! he! he!”

“There came forth in reply only a jingling of the bells. My heart grew sick–on account of the dampness of the catacombs.”

“He had a weak point–this Fortunato...”

“His eyes flashed with a fierce light. He laughed and threw the bottle upwards with a gesticulation I did not understand.”

“I had finished a portion of the last and the eleventh; there remained but a single stone to be fitted and plastered in.”

“The man wore motley. He had on a tight-fitting parti-striped dress, and his head was surmounted by the conical cap and bells.”

″‘You jest,’ he exclaimed, recoiling a few paces. ‘But let us proceed to the Amontillado.‘”

“Its walls had been lined with human remains, piled to the vault overhead, in the fashion of the great catacombs of Paris.”

“A moment more and I had fettered him to the granite.”

“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!”

“It was, perhaps, the narrow limits to which he thus confined himself upon the guitar, which gave birth, in great measure, to the fantastic character of his performances.”

“His heart is a suspended lute; As soon as you touch it, it resonates.”

“A cadaverousness of complexion; an eye large, liquid and very luminous...finely molded chin, speaking, in its want of prominence, of a want of moral energy.”

“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 evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher.”

“Blood was its Avatar and its seal—the redness and the horror of blood.”

“The external world could take care of itself.”

“And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.”

“The ‘Red Death’ had long devastated the country. No pestilence had ever been so fatal, or so hideous.”

“I knew that in doing so I was committing a sin- a deadly sin that would so jeopardize my immortal soul as to place it- if such a thing were possible- even beyond the reach of the infinite mercy of the most Merciful and most Terrible God.”

“I came to look upon it with unutterable loathing, and to flee silently from its odious presence, as from the breath of a pestilence.”

“Beneath the pressure of torments such as these, the feeble remnant of the good of within me succumbed.”

“I had walled the monster up within the tomb.”

“I knew myself no longer. My original soul seemed, at once, to takes its flight from my body.”

“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?”

“Then silence, and stillness, and night were the universe.”

“The mode and the hour were all that occupied or distracted me.”

“Neither could I forget what I had read of these pits—that the sudden extinction of life formed no part of their most horrible plan.”

“Long suffering had nearly annihilated all my ordinary powers of mind.”

“Free!—I had but escaped death in one form of agony, to be delivered unto worse than death in some other.”

“I struggled no more, but the agony of my soul found vent in one loud, long, and final scream of despair.”

“I was sick—sick unto death with that long agony.”

“For the first time during many hours—or perhaps days—I thought.”

“No man,” Poe himself wrote, “has recorded, no man has dared to record, the wonders of his inner life.”

He was remarkable for self-respect, without haughtiness.

“He had a sensitive and tender heart and would do anything for a friend. His nature was entirely free from selfishness.”

We saw but one presentiment of the man— a quiet, patient, industrious and most gentlemanly person.”

He walked the streets, in madness or melancholy, with lips moving in indistinct curses, or with eyes upturned in passionate prayer (never for himself, for he felt, or professed to feel, that he was already damned, but) for their happiness who at the moment were objects of his idolatry;

“Your friend always,” EDGAR A. POE.

My mind, however, was too much occupied to sleep, and I lay the whole night buried in meditation.

My mind, however, was too much occupied to sleep, and I lay the whole night buried in meditation.

It is therefore evident that, ascend as high as we may, we cannot, literally speaking, arrive at a limit beyond which no atmosphere is to be found. It must exist, I argued; although it may exist in a state of infinite rarefaction.

When darkness at length overtook me, I went to bed in great anxiety, fearing to pass over the object of so much curiosity when I should have no opportunity of observing it.

When my fears and astonishment had in some degree subsided, I had little difficulty in supposing it to be some mighty volcanic fragment ejected from that world to which I was so rapidly approaching, and, in all probability, one of that singular class of substances occasionally picked up on the earth, and termed meteoric stones for want of a better appellation.

My agitation was extreme; for I had now little doubt of soon reaching the end of my perilous voyage.

Sleep was a matter nearly out of the question.

“Well! now listen!—if you will venture out on the limb as far as you think safe, and not let go the beetle, I’ll make you a present of a silver dollar as soon as you get down.”

“Curse your stupidity! do you know your right hand from your left?”

You recollect also, that I became quite vexed at you for insisting that my drawing resembled a death’s-head.

It was at this moment that his eyes, and mine also, fell upon the scrap of parchment, which I then supposed to be paper.”

Pirates, you know, have nothing to do with goats; they appertain to the farming interest.”

Have you ever heard of any important treasure being unearthed along the coast?”

I now thought it possible that the coating of dirt might have something to do with the failure;

“I knew, could have reference to nothing but a telescope; for the word ‘glass’ is rarely employed in any other sense by seamen.

Adjusting the focus of the telescope, I again looked, and now made it out to be a human skull.”

“But what have we here? Heavens! the town is swarming with wild beasts! How terrible a spectacle!—how dangerous a peculiarity!”

He runs!—he leaps!—he flies!

“To meet thee in that hollow vale.”

You were not to be found, and I was fearful of losing a bargain.”

For weeks, for months, I pondered upon the means of the murder.

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

Ah, dream too bright to last!

Where weeps the silver willow!

Follow me, or I stab you where you stand!

There may be a class of beings, human once, but now invisible to humanity, to whom, from afar, our disorder may seem order—our unpicturesqueness picturesque;

a nature which is not God, nor an emanation from God, but which still is nature in the sense of the handiwork of the angels that hover between man and God.

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

“It is nothing but the wind in the chimney—it is only a mouse crossing the floor,” or “It is merely a cricket which has made a single chirp.”

In snatches, they learn something of the wisdom which is of good, and more of the mere knowledge which is of evil.

“It is all over with us, and may God have mercy upon our souls!”

“It is natural to inquire how they could float such a vast distance, upon the most frequented part of the Atlantic, and not be discovered all this time.

“There is no exquisite beauty, without some strangeness in the proportion.”

She loved me I should not have doubted; and I might have been easily aware that, in a bosom such as hers, love would have reigned no ordinary passion.

She seemed conscious of my weakness or my folly, and, smiling, called it Fate.

“I am dying, yet shall I live.”

I seemed to feel that I had an important part to play, without exactly understanding what it was.

It is useless, of course, to dwell upon my joy—upon my transport—upon my illimitable ecstasy of heart.

“You are all mad—every one of you. I am as positive that yesterday was Sunday as I am that I sit upon this chair.”

But I am a man of my word—mark that!

“Come to me, by all means, my dear good friend, as soon as you receive this. Come and help us to rejoice.

“The ideas you have suggested are to me, I confess, utterly novel.

Never was triumph more consummate; never was defeat borne with so ill a grace.

To chase the hare, and follow too, The hounds, and horn, and all the crew, And when they’re gone, to sit and muse anew.”

“Had it lived long, it would have been Lilies without, roses within.”

A mountain, to be sure, by the mere sentiment of physical magnitude which it conveys, does impress us with a sense of the sublime—

I make Beauty, therefore—using the word as inclusive of the sublime—I make Beauty the province of the poem, simply because it is an obvious rule of Art that effects should be made to spring as directly as possible from their causes:—

“Oh, God! oh, Heaven—how my heart beats in coupling those two words.”

Shakespeare is in possession of the world’s good opinion, and yet Shakespeare is the greatest of poets.

A fool thinks Shakespeare a great poet—yet the fool has never read Shakespeare.”

Therefore the end of instruction should be happiness; and happiness is another name for pleasure;-therefore the end of instruction should be pleasure:

He who regards it directly and intensely sees, it is true, the star, but it is the star without a ray-while he who surveys it less inquisitively is conscious of all for which the star is useful to us below-its brilliancy and its beauty.

I love a sheep from the bottom of my heart.”