Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) was an American writer and poet, known for his dark and mysterious tales and poems. Poe was born in Boston, Massachusetts, but his parents died when he was young, and he was raised by a wealthy merchant family in Richmond, Virginia.
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Poe had a troubled personal life, marked by financial difficulties, alcoholism, and the loss of several loved ones to illness and death. He struggled to support himself as a writer, working as an editor for various literary magazines and publishing his own works.
Poe’s literary contributions include some of the most iconic and influential works in American literature, including the short stories “The Tell-Tale Heart,” “The Cask of Amontillado,” and “The Fall of the House of Usher,” as well as the poems “The Raven,” “Annabel Lee,” and “The Bells.”
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Poe’s writing style is characterized by a focus on the macabre and the psychological, often exploring themes of death, loss, and madness. His works have had a significant impact on the horror and detective fiction genres and continue to be widely read and studied today.
Embark on a haunting journey through the depths of the human psyche with these chilling Edgar Allan Poe quotes on death, madness, and the enigmatic complexities of the human mind.
Famous Edgar Allan Poe Quotes
1. “All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.”
2. “I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.”
3. “And all I loved, I loved alone.”
4. “Believe only half of what you see and nothing that you hear.”
5. “I am a writer. Therefore. I am not sane.”
6. “Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.”
7. “There is no beauty without some strangeness.”
8. “We loved with a love that was more than love.”
9. “Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.”
10. “Science has not yet taught us if madness is or is not the sublimity of the intelligence.”
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11. “I was never really insane except upon occasions when my heart was touched.”
12. “Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality.”
13. “Leave my loneliness unbroken.”
14. “To elevate the soul, poetry is necessary.”
15. “I do not suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it.”
16. “And so being young and dipped in folly I fell in love with melancholy.”
17. “Never to suffer would never to have been blessed.”
18. “Poetry is the rhythmical creation of beauty in words.”
19. “A short story must have a single mood and every sentence must build towards it.”
20. “The scariest monsters are the ones that lurk within our souls.”
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21. “Beauty of whatever kind, in its supreme development, invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears.”
22. “Stupidity is a talent for misconception.”
23. “Years of love have been forgot, In the hatred of a minute.”
24. “If a poem hasn’t ripped apart your soul; you haven’t experienced poetry.”
25. “A wise man hears one word and understands two.”
26. “The death of a beautiful woman, is unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world.”
27. “Those who gossip with you will gossip about you.”
28. “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?”
29. “Deep in earth my love is lying And I must weep alone.”
30. “There are chords in the hearts of the most reckless which cannot be touched without emotion.”
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31. “Every poem should remind the reader that they are going to die.”
32. “All suffering originates from craving, from attachment, from desire.”
33. “The true genius shudders at incompleteness – and usually prefers silence to saying something which is not everything it should be.”
34. “The eye, like a shattered mirror, multiplies the images of sorrow.”
35. “The best things in life make you sweaty.”
36. “The believer is happy. The doubter is wise.”
37. “To observe attentively is to remember distinctly.”
38. “Sometimes I’m terrified of my heart; of its constant hunger for whatever it is it wants. The way it stops and starts.”
39. “Lord help my poor soul.”
40. “I have great faith in fools; self-confidence my friends call it.”
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41. “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.”
42. “The goodness of the true pun is in the direct ratio of its intolerability.”
43. “There are some secrets which do not permit themselves to be told.”
44. “It is a happiness to wonder; – it is a happiness to dream.”
45. “I have no faith in human perfect ability. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active – not more happy – nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago.”
46. “Experience has shown, and a true philosophy will always show, that a vast, perhaps the larger portion of the truth arises from the seemingly irrelevant.”
47. “That man is not truly brave who is afraid either to seem or to be, when it suits him, a coward.”
48. “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 winged seraphs of heaven Coveted her and me.”
49. “False hope is nicer than no hope at all.”
50. “A lie travels round the world while truth is putting her boots on.”
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51. “I intend to put up with nothing that I can put down.”
52. “Sleep, those little slices of death – how I loathe them.”
53. “You call it hope-that fire of fire! It is but agony of desire.”
54. “If you wish to forget anything on the spot, make a note that this thing is to be remembered.”
55. “How many good books suffer neglect through the inefficiency of their beginnings!”
56. “The world is a great ocean, upon which we encounter more tempestuous storms than calms.”
57. “That which you mistake for madness is but an overacuteness of the senses.”
58. “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.”
59. “The past is a pebble in my shoe.”
60. “With me poetry has not been a purpose, but a passion.”
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61. “Of puns it has been said that those who most dislike them are those who are least able to utter them.”
62. “If you run out of ideas follow the road; you’ll get there.”
63. “But our love 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 Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.”
64. “And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor, Shall be lifted – Nevermore!”
65. “I felt that I breathed an atmosphere of sorrow.”
66. “Men of genius are far more abundant than is supposed. In fact, to appreciate thoroughly the work of what we call genius, is to possess all the genius by which the work was produced.”
67. “All religion, my friend, is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination, and poetry.”
68. “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.’”
69. “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.”
70. “The ninety and nine are with dreams, content but the hope of the world made new, is the hundredth man who is grimly bent on making those dreams come true.”
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71. “In reading some books we occupy ourselves chiefly with the thoughts of the author; in perusing others, exclusively with our own.”
72. “To die laughing must be the most glorious of all glorious deaths!”
73. “A man’s grammar, like Caesar’s wife, should not only be pure, but above suspicion of impurity.”
74. “It was night, and the rain fell; and falling, it was rain, but, having fallen, it was blood.”
75. “Even in the grave, all is not lost.”
76. “Beauty is the sole legitimate province of the poem.”
77. “The idea of God, infinity, or spirit stands for the possible attempt at an impossible conception.”
78. “Indeed, there is an eloquence in true enthusiasm that is not to be doubted.”
79. “Believe nothing you hear, and only one half that you see.”
80. “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.”
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81. “The plots of God are perfect. The Universe is a plot of God.”
82. “If a man deceives me once, shame on him; if he deceives me twice, shame on me.”
83. “Keeping time, time, time, In a sort of Runic rhyme, To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells, From the bells, bells, bells.”
84. “Perversity is the human thirst for self-torture.”
85. “And all my days are trances, And all my nightly dreams Are where thy dark eye glances, And where thy footstep gleams – In what ethereal dances, By what eternal streams!”
86. “And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting…”
87. “Art is to look at not to criticize.”
88. “Convinced myself, I seek not to convince.”
89. “It is the nature of truth in general, as of some ores in particular, to be richest when most superficial.”
90. “I heed not that my earthly lot Hath – little of Earth in it – That years of love have been forgot In the hatred of a minute: – I mourn not that the desolate Are happier, sweet, than I, But that you sorrow for my fate Who am a passer by.”
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91. “The rain came down upon my head – Unshelter’d. And the wind rendered me mad and deaf and blind.”
92. “I have made no money. I am as poor now as ever I was in my life – except in hope, which is by no means bankable.”
93. “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.”
94. “And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.”
95. “I found him well educated, with unusual powers of mind, but infected with misanthropy, and subject to perverse moods of alternate enthusiasm and melancholy.”
96. “The fever called “living” Is conquer’d at last.”
97. “I stand amid the roar Of a surf-tormented shore, And I hold within my hand Grains of golden sand- How few! yet how they creep Through my fingers to the deep, While I weep- while I weep!”
98. “Man’s real life is happy, chiefly because he is ever expecting that it soon will be so.”
99. “Sensations are the great things, after all. Should you ever be drowned or hung, be sure and make a note of your sensations; they will be worth to you ten guineas a sheet.”
100. “Invisible things are the only realities.”