I have great faith in fools; self-confidence my friends call it.
—Edgar Allan Poe
Topics: Confidence
The nose of a mob is its imagination. By this, at any time, it can be quietly led.
—Edgar Allan Poe
Topics: Tyranny
Believe me, there exists no such dilemma as that in which a gentleman is placed when he is forced to reply to a blackguard.
—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 of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
—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
Topics: Dreams
I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.
—Edgar Allan Poe
Topics: Insanity, Sanity
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
Topics: Philosophy
To vilify a great man is the readiest way in which a little man can himself attain greatness.
—Edgar Allan Poe
Topics: Slander, Greatness, Insults
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
Topics: Animals
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 the disease of thought—from moods of mind exalted at the expense of the general intellect.
—Edgar Allan Poe
In efforts to soar above our nature we invariably fall below it.
—Edgar Allan Poe
With me poetry has not been a purpose, but a passion.
—Edgar Allan Poe
Topics: Poets, Poetry
Never to suffer would have been never to have been blessed.
—Edgar Allan Poe
Topics: Adversity, Difficulties
Odors have an altogether peculiar force, in affecting us through association; a force differing essentially from that of objects addressing the touch, the taste, the sight or the hearing.
—Edgar Allan Poe
Beauty of whatever kind, in its supreme development, invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears.
—Edgar Allan Poe
Topics: Beauty
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
Topics: Critics, Criticism
Of a water that flows,
With a lullaby sound,
From a spring but a very few
Feet under ground—
From a cavern not very far
Down under ground.
—Edgar Allan Poe
Topics: Water
That man is not truly brave who is afraid either to seem or to be, when it suits him, a coward.
—Edgar Allan Poe
Topics: Cowardice, Coward
Mournful and Never-ending Remembrance.
—Edgar Allan Poe
Topics: Memory
To be thoroughly conversant with a man’s heart, is to take our final lesson in the iron-clasped volume of despair.
—Edgar Allan Poe
Topics: Despair
It may well be doubted whether human ingenuity can construct an enigma of the kind which human ingenuity may not, by proper application, resolve.
—Edgar Allan Poe
Topics: Reason
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
Topics: Christians, Christianity
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. On the other hand, the lightness of the artillery should not degenerate into pop-gunnery—by which term we may designate the character of the greater portion of the newspaper press—their sole legitimate object being the discussion of ephemeral matters in an ephemeral manner.
—Edgar Allan Poe
Topics: Journalism
All that we see or seen is but a dream within a dream.
—Edgar Allan Poe
Topics: Illusion, Dreams
If you wish to forget something on the spot, make a note that this thing is to be remembered.
—Edgar Allan Poe
Topics: Memory
SLEEP – Those little slices of death, how I loathe them.
—Edgar Allan Poe
Topics: Sleep
We loved with a love that was more than love.
—Edgar Allan Poe
Topics: Romance, Love
Because I feel that in the heavens above
The angels, whispering one to another,
Can find among their burning tears of love,
None so devotional as that of “Mother,”
Therefore, by that dear name I have long called you,
You who are more than mother unto me.
—Edgar Allan Poe
Topics: Mothers
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
Topics: Singing
No man who ever lived knows any more about the hereafter … than you and I; and all religion … is simply evolved out of chicanery, fear, greed, imagination and poetry.
—Edgar Allan Poe
Topics: Religion
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Thomas Bailey Aldrich American Writer
- Marge Piercy American Poet
- Willa Cather American Novelist
- Edna St. Vincent Millay American Poet
- Walt Whitman American Poet
- Emily Dickinson American Poet
- John Greenleaf Whittier American Poet, Abolitionist
- Josiah Gilbert Holland American Editor, Novelist
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow American Poet
- Washington Allston American Artist, Writer
Leave a Reply