Edgar Allen Poe > Quotes

“All religion, my friend, is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination and poetry.”
― Edgar Allen Poe

“There is no beauty without some strangeness.”
― Edgar Allen Poe

“At midnight, in the month of June, I stand beneath the Mystic moon”
― Edgar Allen Poe

“Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.”
― Edgar Allen Poe

“All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.”
― Edgar Allen Poe

“The realities of the world affected me as visions, and as visions only, while the wild ideas of the land of dreams became, in turn, not the material of my every-day existence, but in very deed that existence utterly and solely in itself.”
― Edgar Allen Poe

“On the other hand, it is clear that s poem may be improperly brief. Undue brevity degenerates into mere epigrammatism. A very short poem, while now and then producing a brilliant or vivid, never produces a profound or enduring, effect. There must be the steady pressing down of the stamp upon the wax. Béranger has wrought innumerable things, pungent and spirit-stirring; but, in general, they have been too imponderous to stamp themselves deeply into the public opinion, and thus, as so many feathers of fancy, have been blown aloft only to be whistled down the wind.”
― Edgar Allen Poe

“It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of Annabel Lee;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.

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 wingèd seraphs of Heaven
Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her highborn kinsmen came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in Heaven,
Went envying her and me—
Yes!—that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

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
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride,
In her sepulchre there by the sea—
In her tomb by the sounding sea.”
― Edgar Allen Poe

“Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality.”
― Edgar Allen Poe

“In the strange anomaly of my existence, feelings with me, had never been of the heart, and my passions always were of the mind.”
― Edgar Allen Poe

“Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold and so by degrees very gradually I made up my mind to take the life of that old man and thus rif myself of the eye forever”
― Edgar Allen Poe, A Collection of Stories

“Beauty of whatever kind in its supreme development invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears. Melancholy is thus the most legitimate of all the poetical tones. [...] I asked myself—“Of all melancholy topics what, according to the universal understanding of mankind, is the most melancholy?” Death, was the obvious reply. “And when,” I said, “is this most melancholy of topics most poetical?” From what I have already explained at some length the answer here also is obvious—“When it most closely allies itself to Beauty: the death then of a beautiful woman is unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world, and equally is it beyond doubt that the lips best suited for such topic are those of a bereaved lover.”
― Edgar Allen Poe

“I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity”
― Edgar Allen Poe

“Tell me every terrible thing you ever did, and let me love you anyway”
― Edgar Allen Poe

“I remained too much inside my head and ended up losing my mind”
― Edgar Allen Poe

“And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted —nevermore!”
― Edgar Allen Poe, The Raven: A Dark Poem of Love and Loss by Edgar Allan Poe

“Quote the raven, 'Nevermore”
― Edgar Allen Poe, The Raven: A Dark Poem of Love and Loss by Edgar Allan Poe

“Quoth the raven, 'Nevermore”
― Edgar Allen Poe, The Raven: A Dark Poem of Love and Loss by Edgar Allan Poe

“There is no exquisite beauty… without some strangeness in the proportion”
― Edgar Allen Poe