Edgar Allan Poe Quotes

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

- Edgar Allan Poe

I have no faith in human perfectability. 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.

- Edgar Allan Poe

A strong argument for the religion of Christ is this - that offences against Charity are about the only ones which men on their death-beds can be made - not to understand - but to feel - as crime.

- Edgar Allan Poe

Stupidity is a talent for misconception.

- Edgar Allan Poe

Of puns it has been said that those who most dislike them are those who are least able to utter them.

- Edgar Allan Poe

There are few cases in which mere popularity should be considered a proper test of merit; but the case of song-writing is, I think, one of the few.

- Edgar Allan Poe

I have, indeed, no abhorrence of danger, except in its absolute effect - in terror.

- Edgar Allan Poe

I wish I could write as mysterious as a cat.

- Edgar Allan Poe

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.

- Edgar Allan Poe

The true genius shudders at incompleteness - and usually prefers silence to saying something which is not everything it should be.

- Edgar Allan Poe

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.

- Edgar Allan Poe

Man's real life is happy, chiefly because he is ever expecting that it soon will be so.

- Edgar Allan Poe

I am above the weakness of seeking to establish a sequence of cause and effect, between the disaster and the atrocity.

- Edgar Allan Poe

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

- 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

That pleasure which is at once the most pure, the most elevating and the most intense, is derived, I maintain, from the contemplation of the beautiful.

- Edgar Allan Poe

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.'

- Edgar Allan Poe

I would define, in brief, the poetry of words as the rhythmical creation of Beauty.

- Edgar Allan Poe

Science has not yet taught us if madness is or is not the sublimity of the intelligence.

- Edgar Allan Poe

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

- 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

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

It is the nature of truth in general, as of some ores in particular, to be richest when most superficial.

- Edgar Allan Poe

The rudiment of verse may, possibly, be found in the spondee.

- 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

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

- Edgar Allan Poe

In one case out of a hundred a point is excessively discussed because it is obscure; in the ninety-nine remaining it is obscure because it is excessively discussed.

- Edgar Allan Poe

To vilify a great man is the readiest way in which a little man can himself attain greatness.

- 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

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

- Edgar Allan Poe

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

- Edgar Allan Poe

I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.

- 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 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

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

- Edgar Allan Poe

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.

- Edgar Allan Poe

The generous Critic fann'd the Poet's fire, And taught the world with reason to admire.

- Edgar Allan Poe

The nose of a mob is its imagination. By this, at any time, it can be quietly led.

- 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

Lord, help my poor soul.

- Edgar Allan Poe

With me poetry has not been a purpose, but a passion.

- Edgar Allan Poe

We loved with a love that was more than love.

- Edgar Allan Poe

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

- Edgar Allan Poe