110+ Edgar Allan Poe Quotes On Writing, Death And Madness

Edgar Allan Poe was an American writer, editor, and literary critic. He is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and the macabre. He is widely regarded as a central figure of Romanticism in the United States and of American literature as a whole. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Edgar Allan Poe on love, writing, death.

Top 10 Edgar Allan Poe Quotes

1. I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.
2. All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.
3. The scariest monsters are the ones that lurk within our souls.
4. The believer is happy. The doubter is wise.
5. There is no beauty without some strangeness
6. We loved with a love that was more than love.
7. Years of love have been forgot, In the hatred of a minute.
8. And so, being young and dipt in folly, I fell in love with melancholy.
9. Always keep a big bottle of booze at your side. If a bird starts talking nonsense to you in the middle of the night pour yourself a stiff drink.
10. I remained too much inside my head and ended up losing my mind.

Edgar Allan Poe Image Quotes

All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream. — Edgar Allan Poe

The believer is happy. The doubter is wise. — Edgar Allan Poe

We loved with a love that was more than love. — Edgar Allan Poe

Years of love have been forgot, In the hatred of a minute. — Edgar Allan Poe

And so, being young and dipt in folly, I fell in love with melancholy. — Edgar Allan Poe

I remained too much inside my head and ended up losing my mind. — Edgar Allan Poe

I was never really insane except upon occasions when my heart was touched. — Edgar Allan Poe

A short story must have a single mood and every sentence must build towards it. — Edgar Allan Poe

The best things in life make you sweaty. — Edgar Allan Poe

If a man deceives me once, shame on him; if he deceives me twice, shame on me. — Edgar Allan Poe

I fell in love with melancholy — Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe Short Quotes

• Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality.
• I was never really insane except upon occasions when my heart was touched.
• A lie travels round the world while truth is putting her boots on.
• Leave my loneliness unbroken
• The world is a great ocean, upon which we encounter more tempestuous storms than calms.
• If a man deceives me once, shame on him; if he deceives me twice, shame on me.
• It was night, and the rain fell; and falling, it was rain, but, having fallen, it was blood.
• If you wish to forget anything on the spot, make a note that this thing is to be remembered.
• Those who gossip with you will gossip about you.
• Invisible things are the only realities.

Edgar Allan Poe Quotes About Love

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! — Edgar Allan Poe

I fell in love with melancholy — Edgar Allan Poe

There are moments when, even to the sober eye of Reason, the world of our sad humanity must assume the aspect of Hell. — 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

In the Heaven's above, the angels, whispering to one another, can find, among their burning terms of love, none so devotional as that of 'Mother. — Edgar Allan Poe

Deep in earth my love is lying And I must weep alone. — Edgar Allan Poe

I have no words alas! to tell the loveliness of loving well — Edgar Allan Poe

Yes I now feel that it was then on that evening of sweet dreams- that the very first dawn of human love burst upon the icy night of my spirit. Since that period I have never seen nor heard your name without a shiver half of delight half of anxiety. — Edgar Allan Poe

This maiden she lived with no other thought Than to love and be loved by me. — Edgar Allan Poe

Alas! for that accursed time They bore thee o'er the billow, From love to titled age and crime, And an unholy pillow! From me, and from our misty clime, Where weeps the silver willow! — Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe Quotes About Writing

A short story must have a single mood and every sentence must build towards it. — Edgar Allan Poe

I wish I could write as mysterious as a cat. — Edgar Allan Poe

Few persons can be made to believe that it is not quite an easy thing to invent a method of secret writing that shall baffle investigation. Yet it may be roundly asserted that human ingenuity cannot concoct a cipher which human ingenuity cannot resolve. — Edgar Allan Poe

A man's grammar, like Caesar's wife, must not only be pure, but above suspicion of impurity. — Edgar Allan Poe

Most writers - poets in especial - prefer having it understood that they compose by a species of fine frenzy - an ecstatic intuition - and would positively shudder at letting the public take a peep behind the scenes. — 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

Grammar is the analysis of language. — Edgar Allan Poe

In the marginalia ... we talk only to ourselves; we therefore talk freshly - boldly - originally - with abandonment - without conceit. — Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe Quotes About Death

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

In death - no! even in the grave all is not lost. Else there is no immortality for man. Arousing from the most profound slumbers, we break the gossamer web of some dream. Yet in a second afterward, (so frail may that web have been) we remember not that we have dreamed. — Edgar Allan Poe

Sleep, those little slices of death — how I loathe them. — Edgar Allan Poe

To die laughing must be the most glorious of all glorious deaths! — Edgar Allan Poe

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

From a proud tower in the town, Death looks gigantically down. — Edgar Allan Poe

I never can hear a crowd of people singing and gesticulating, all together, at an Italian opera, without fancying myself at Athens, listening to that particular tragedy, by Sophocles, in which he introduces a full chorus of turkeys, who set about bewailing the death of Meleager. — Edgar Allan Poe

I could have clasped the red walls to my bosom as a garment of eternal peace. "Death," I said, "any death but that of the pit!" Fool! might I have not known that into the pit it was the object of the burning iron to urge me? — Edgar Allan Poe

Thank Heaven! the crisis --The danger, is past, and the lingering illness, is over at last --, and the fever called Living is conquered at last. — Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe Quotes About Madness

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. — Edgar Allan Poe

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

Men have called me mad; but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence. — Edgar Allan Poe

Yet mad I am not...and very surely do I not dream. — Edgar Allan Poe

The rain came down upon my head - Unshelter'd. And the wind rendered me mad and deaf and blind. — Edgar Allan Poe

The true genius shudders at incompleteness. — Edgar Allan Poe

Science has not yet taught us if madness is or is not the sublimity of the intelligence. — Edgar Allan Poe

He must be theory-mad beyond redemption who ... shall ... persist in attempting to reconcile the obstinate oils and waters of Poetry and Truth. — Edgar Allan Poe

And much of Madness, and more of Sin, And Horror the soul of the plot. — Edgar Allan Poe

And now have I not told you that what you mistake for madness is but overacuteness of the senses? — Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe Quotes About Poetry

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

If a poem hasn't ripped apart your soul; you haven't experienced poetry. — Edgar Allan Poe

Poetry is the rhythmical creation of beauty in words. — Edgar Allan Poe

With me poetry has not been a purpose, but a passion. — Edgar Allan Poe

It is clear that a 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. — Edgar Allan Poe

Boston: Their hotels are bad. Their pumpkin pies are delicious. Their poetry is not so good. — Edgar Allan Poe

With me poetry has been not a purpose, but a passion; and the passions should be held in reverence: they must not they cannot at will be excited, with an eye to the paltry compensations, or the more paltry commendations, of mankind. — Edgar Allan Poe

The object, Truth, or the satisfaction of the intellect, and the object, Passion, or the excitement of the heart, are, although attainable, to a certain extent, in poetry, far more readily attainable in prose. — Edgar Allan Poe

I would define, in brief, the Poetry of words as the Rhythmical Creation of Beauty. Its sole arbiter is taste. With the intellect or with the conscience, it has only collateral relations. Unless incidentally, it has no concern whatever either with duty or with truth. — Edgar Allan Poe

Melancholy is ... the most legitimate of all the poetical tones. — Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe Quotes About Fear

Deep into the darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing,Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before — Edgar Allan Poe

Scorching my seared heart with a pain, not hell shall make me fear again. — Edgar Allan Poe

A fearful instance of the ill consequences attending upon irascibility - alive, with the qualifications of the dead - dead, with the propensities of the living - an anomaly on the face of the earth - being very calm, yet breathless. — Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe Quotes About Hope

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

False hope is nicer than no hope at all. — Edgar Allan Poe

You call it hope-that fire of fire! It is but agony of desire. — Edgar Allan Poe

Take this kiss upon the brow! And, in parting from you now,Thus much let me avow--You are not wrong who deemThat my days have been a dream;Yet if hope has flown awayIn a night, or in a day,In a vision, or in none,Is it therefore the less gone?All that we see or seemIs but a dream within a dream. — Edgar Allan Poe

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. — Edgar Allan Poe

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. — Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe Quotes About Mysterious

A mystery, and a dream, should my early life seem. — Edgar Allan Poe

..bear in mind that, in general, it is the object of our newspapers rather to create a sensation-to make a point-than to further the cause of truth." Dupin in "The Mystery of Marie Roget — Edgar Allan Poe

Men die nightly in their beds, wringing the hands of ghostly confessors ... on account of the hideousness of mysteries which will not suffer themselves to be revealed. — Edgar Allan Poe

Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore. — Edgar Allan Poe

Mysteries force a man to think, and so injure his health. — Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe Quotes About Dream

Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night. — Edgar Allan Poe

Dreams are the eraser dust I blow off my page. They fade into the emptiness, another dark gray day. Dreams are only memories of the plans I had back then. Dreams are eraser dust and now I use a pen. — Edgar Allan Poe

We gave the Future to the winds, and slumbered tranquilly in the Present, weaving the dull world around us into dreams. — 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

In beauty of face no maiden ever equaled her. It was the radiance of an opium-dream - an airy and spirit-lifting vision more wildly divine than the fantasies which hovered about the slumbering souls of the daughters of Delos. — Edgar Allan Poe

In visions of the dark night I have dreamed of joy departed-- But a waking dream of life and light Hath left me broken-hearted. — Edgar Allan Poe

Yet we met; and fate bound us together at the alter,and I never spoke of passion nor thought of love. She, however shunned society, and, attaching herself to me alone rendered me happy. It is a happiness to wonder; it is a happiness to dream. — 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

For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams of the beautiful Annabel Lee — Edgar Allan 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 Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe Quotes About Soul

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

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

And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor, Shall be lifted -- Nevermore! — Edgar Allan Poe

For years your name never passed my lips, while my soul drank in, with a delirious thirst, all that was uttered in my presence respecting you. — Edgar Allan Poe

You need not attempt to shake off or to banter off Romance. It is an evil you will never get rid of to the end of your days. It is a part of yourself ... of your soul. Age will only mellow it a little, and give it a holier tone. — Edgar Allan Poe

No thinking being lives who, at some luminous point of his life of thought, has not felt himself lost amid the surges of futile efforts at understanding, or believing, that anything exists greater than his own soul. — Edgar Allan Poe

The sole purpose is to provide infinite springs, at which the soul may allay the eternal thirst TO KNOW which is forever unquenchable within it, since to quench it, would be to extinguish the soul's self. — Edgar Allan Poe

The reproduction of what the senses perceive in nature through the veil of the soul. — Edgar Allan Poe

Yet I am not more sure that my soul lives, than I am that perverseness is one of the primitive impulses of the human heartone of the indivisible primary faculties, or sentiments, which give direction to the character of Man. — 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

Edgar Allan Poe Quotes About Life

The best things in life make you sweaty. — 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 truth is, I am heartily sick of this life & of the nineteenth century in general. (I am convinced that every thing is going wrong.) — 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

And the life of the ebony clock went out with that of the last of the gay. And the flames of the tripods expired. And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all. — 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

Finally on Sunday morning, October 7, 1849, "He became quiet and seemed to rest for a short time. Then, gently, moving his head," he said, "Lord help my poor soul." As he had lived so he died-in great misery and tragedy. — Edgar Allan Poe

Thou wouldst be loved? - then let thy heart From its present pathway part not! Being everything which now thou art, Be nothing which thou art not. So with the world thy gentle ways, Thy grace, thy more than beauty, Shall be an endless theme of praise, And love - a simple duty. — Edgar Allan Poe

I have been happy, though in a dream. I have been happy-and I love the theme: Dreams! in their vivid colouring of life As in that fleeting, shadowy, misty strife — Edgar Allan Poe

...for her whom in life thou dids't abhor, in death thou shalt adore — Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe Famous Quotes And Sayings

I have absolutely no pleasure in the stimulants in which I sometimes so madly indulge. It has not been in the pursuit of pleasure that I have periled life and reputation and reason. It has been the desperate attempt to escape from torturing memories, from a sense of insupportable loneliness and a dread of some strange impending doom. — Edgar Allan Poe

All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream. — Edgar Allan Poe

The believer is happy. The doubter is wise. — Edgar Allan Poe

We loved with a love that was more than love. — Edgar Allan Poe

Years of love have been forgot, In the hatred of a minute. — Edgar Allan Poe

And so, being young and dipt in folly, I fell in love with melancholy. — Edgar Allan Poe

I remained too much inside my head and ended up losing my mind. — 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

A short story must have a single mood and every sentence must build towards it. — Edgar Allan Poe

The best chess-player in Christendom may be little more than the best player of chess; but proficiency in whist implies capacity for success in all those more important undertakings where mind struggles with mind. — Edgar Allan Poe

The best things in life make you sweaty. — Edgar Allan Poe

I found him well educated, with unusual powers of mind, but infected with misanthropy, and subject to perverse moods of alternate enthusiasm and melancholy. — Edgar Allan Poe

If a man deceives me once, shame on him; if he deceives me twice, shame on me. — Edgar Allan Poe

I fell in love with melancholy — Edgar Allan Poe

Truth is not always in a well. In fact, as regards the more important knowledge, I do believe that she is invariably superficial. The depth lies in the valleys where we seek her, and not upon the mountain-tops where she is found. — Edgar Allan Poe

[E]very plot, worth the name, must be elaborated to its dénouement before anything be attempted with the pen. It is only with the dénouement constantly in view that we can plot its indispensable air of consequence, or causation, by making the incidents, and especially the tone at all points tend to the development of the intention. — Edgar Allan Poe

Reality is the #1 cause of insanity among those who are in contact with it — Edgar Allan Poe

Never to suffer would have been never to have been blessed. — Edgar Allan Poe

Sometimes I’m terrified of my heart; of its constant hunger for whatever it is it wants. The way it stops and starts. — Edgar Allan Poe

Once upon a midnight dreary — Edgar Allan Poe

And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor. — Edgar Allan Poe

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

Stupidity is a talent for misconception. — Edgar Allan Poe

If we examine a work of ordinary art, by means of a powerful microscope, all traces of resemblance to nature will disappear - but the closest scrutiny of the photogenic drawing discloses only a more absolute truth, a more perfect identity of aspect with the thing represented. — Edgar Allan Poe

I have great faith in fools; My friends call it self-confidence. — Edgar Allan Poe

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary. — Edgar Allan Poe

In other words, I believed, and still do believe, that truth, is frequently of its own essence, superficial, and that, in many cases, the depth lies more in the abysses where we seek her, than in the actual situations wherein she may be found. — 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

That man is not truly brave who is afraid either to seem or to be, when it suits him, a coward. — Edgar Allan Poe

Who cares how time advances? I am drinking ale today. — 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

It may well be doubted whether human ingenuity can construct an enigma... which human ingenuity may not, by proper application, resolve. — Edgar Allan Poe

Me volví loco, con largos intervalos de horrible cordura. — Edgar Allan Poe

Read this and thought of you: Through joy and through sorrow, I wrote. Through hunger and through thirst, I wrote. Through good report and through ill report, I wrote. Through sunshine and through moonshine, I wrote. What I wrote it is unnecessary to say. ~ Edgar Allen Poe — Edgar Allan Poe

A wise man hears one word and understands two. — 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

It may be roundly asserted that human ingenuity cannot concoct a cipher which human ingenuity cannot resolve. — Edgar Allan Poe

Even in the grave, all is not lost. — Edgar Allan Poe

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. — Edgar Allan Poe

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore--While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As if some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. "'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door--Only this and nothing more. — Edgar Allan Poe

We had always dwelled together, beneath a tropical sun, in the Valley of the Many Colored Grass. — Edgar Allan Poe

The past is a pebble in my shoe. — Edgar Allan Poe

There are chords in the hearts of the most reckless which cannot be touched without emotion. — Edgar Allan Poe

I have before suggested that a genuine blackguard is never without a pocket-handkerchief. — 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

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December; And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor. Eagerly, I wished the morrow; - vainly I had sought to borrow From my books surcease of sorrow - sorrow for the lost Leonore - For the rare and radiant maiden who the angels name Lenore - Nameless here for evermore. — Edgar Allan Poe

As the strong man exults in his physical ability, delighting in such exercises as call his muscles into action, so glories the analyst in that moral activity which disentangles. — 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

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

In efforts to soar above our nature, we invariably fall below it. — Edgar Allan Poe

And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door, That I scarce was sure I heard you"— here I opened wide the door; — Darkness there, and nothing more. — Edgar Allan Poe

The writer who neglects punctuation, or mispunctuates, is liable to be misunderstood for the want of merely a comma, it often occurs that an axiom appears a paradox, or that a sarcasm is converted into a sermonoid. — Edgar Allan Poe

I felt that I breathed an atmosphere of sorrow. — 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

The analytical power should not be confounded with simple ingenuity; for while the analyst is necessarily ingenious, the ingenious man is often remarkably incapable of analysis. — Edgar Allan Poe

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

I was never kinder to the old man than during the whole week before I killed him. — Edgar Allan Poe

Decorum -- that bug-bear which deters so many from bliss until the opportunity for bliss has forever gone by. — Edgar Allan Poe

...If you do not take it up with you in some way, I shall be under the necessity of breaking your head with this shovel — Edgar Allan Poe

We now demand the light artillery of the intellect; we need the curt, the condensed, the pointed, the readily diffused -- in place of the verbose, the detailed, the voluminous, the inaccessible. — Edgar Allan Poe

I seemed to be upon the verge of comprehension, without the power to comprehend as men, at time, find themselves upon the brink of rememberance, without being able, in the end, to remember. — Edgar Allan Poe

Life Lessons by Edgar Allan Poe

1. Edgar Allan Poe teaches us to never give up on our dreams and to always strive for success despite any obstacles we may face.
2. He also reminds us to stay true to our own unique voice and to never be afraid to express our creativity.
3. Lastly, Poe reminds us to never be afraid to face our fears and to always be open to the unknown.