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Edgar Allan Poe Quotes

1809–1849 United States

Edgar Allan Poe, born Edgar Poe (January 19, 1809 – October 7, 1849) was an American author, a part of literary studies and was also considered by some peoples both the central and most major figure of the American Romanticism, and a part of the American literature. Poe is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and the macabre.

United States
19th-century poets
Critics
Editors
Essayists

Also known as: Author:Edgar Allan Poe, E. A. Poe, Edgar Allen Poe, Edgar Poe, Poe, Poe, Edgar Allan

Random Edgar Allan Poe quote

112 quotes

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December;
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.

The Raven (1844)

That holy dream—that holy dream,
While all the world were chiding,
Hath cheered me as a lovely beam
A lonely spirit guiding.

I have confidence in fools... self-confidence is what my friends call it.

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.

The Raven and Other Poems (1845)

And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view.

Hast thou not torn the Naiad from her flood,
The Elfin from the green grass, and from me
The summer dream beneath the tamarind tree?

And when, amid no earthly moans,
Down, down that town shall settle hence,
Hell, rising from a thousand thrones,
Shall do it reverence.

The City in the Sea (1831)

"Doubtless," said I, "what it utters is its only stock and store,
Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster
Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore.

The Raven (1844)

Thy Naiad airs have brought me home
To the glory that was Greece
And the grandeur that was Rome.

Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells
From the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells.

Thou wast all that to me, love,
For which my soul did pine...

In reading some books we occupy ourselves chiefly with the thoughts of the author; in perusing others, exclusively with our own.

Marginalia (1844)

Lo! Death has reared himself a throne
In a strange city lying alone
Far down within the dim West,
Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best
Have gone to their eternal rest.

The City in the Sea (1831)

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.

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

Here once, through an alley Titanic,
Of cypress, I roamed with my Soul —
Of cypress, with Psyche, my Soul.

Ulalume (1847)

While the angels, all pallid and wan,
Uprising, unveiling, affirm
That the play is the tragedy, "Man",
And its hero the Conqueror Worm.

The Conqueror Worm (1843)

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.

The Black Cat (1843)

I attacked with great resolution the editorial matter, and, reading it from beginning to end without understanding a syllable, conceived the possibility of its being Chinese, and so re-read it from the end to the beginning, but with no more satisfactory result.

The Angel of the Odd (1850)

So blend the turrets and shadows there
That all seem pendulous in air,
While from a proud tower in the town
Death looks gigantically down.

The City in the Sea (1831)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Edgar Allan Poe (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.