Edgar Allan Poe’s creative and thought-provoking works of literature have established him as a major author in world literature. His imaginative poems and short stories greatly influenced generations and continue to do so to this present day and age. Considered by many as the author, who popularized modern short stories, Poe’s work as an author and editor profoundly influenced the landscape of international literature. The following list of truly inspirational Edgar Allan Poe quotes will help you to better understand the person behind groundbreaking pieces of literature. If you enjoy reading, you’ll also like our collection of truly magnificent reading quotes.
Poe’s deeply moving life was filled with setbacks, disappointments, and tragedies. His father, the actor, David Poe Jr., abandoned the family when Edgar Allan Poe was three years of age. One year later, his mother died of tuberculosis. As an adolescent, he was forced to leave the University of Virginia because of gambling debts.
“Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.”
Edgar Allan Poe
His very first poetry collection was largely unnoticed by reviewers and readers alike. The same held true for his second collection, which he wrote while serving as sergeant major in the United States Military. In 1829, however, was dismissed from Military Academy because he violated rules and regulations.
Enjoy this collection of profound Edgar Allan Poe quotes
Things started to turn for the better when Poe moved to Baltimore, Maryland and sold short stories to local newspapers. He was able to win the attention of local literature critics when one of his pieces of literature, MS. Found in a Bottle, one the price of the best short story in Baltimore. In 1835, six years after being dismissed from Military Academy, Poe became an editor of The Southern Literary Messenger.
100 Insightful Edgar Allan Poe Quotes
The literary works of Edgar Allan Poe lay the foundation for modern forms of detective and horror stories. His emphasis on the structure and style of a literary work earned him wide recognition as a literary critic. Even more so, he was one of the first Americans who became a key figure in the world of international literature.
Here’s our collection of inspirational Edgar Allan Poe quotes
1.
“I was never really insane except upon occasions when my heart was touched.”
Edgar Allan Poe
2.
“Beauty of whatever kind, in its supreme development, invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears.”
Edgar Allan Poe
3.
“I would define, in brief, the poetry of words as the rhythmical creation of beauty.”
Edgar Allan Poe
4.
“To elevate the soul, poetry is necessary.”
Edgar Allan Poe
5.
“There is an eloquence in true enthusiasm”
Edgar Allan Poe
6.
“The best things in life make you sweaty.”
Edgar Allan Poe
7.
“It is a happiness to wonder – it is a happiness to dream.”
Edgar Allan Poe
8.
“All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.”
Edgar Allan Poe
9.
“Experience has shown, and a true philosophy will always show, that a vast, perhaps the larger, portion of truth arises from the seemingly irrelevant.”
Edgar Allan Poe
10.
“A short story must have a single mood and every sentence must build towards it.”
Edgar Allan Poe
11.
“Believe nothing you hear, and only one half that you see.”
Edgar Allan Poe
12.
“Never to suffer would never to have been blessed.”
Edgar Allan Poe
13.
“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
14.
“The true genius shudders at incompleteness — imperfection — and usually prefers silence to saying the something which is not everything that should be said.”
Edgar Allan Poe
15.
“If you wish to forget anything on the spot, make a note that this thing is to be remembered.”
Edgar Allan Poe
16.
“Convinced myself, I seek not to convince.”
Edgar Allan Poe
17.
“We loved with a love that was more than love.”
Edgar Allan Poe
18.
“I have no faith in human perfectibility. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect on humanity. Man is now only more active – not more happy – nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago.”
Edgar Allan Poe
19.
“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 some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.”
Edgar Allan Poe
20.
“I have great faith in fools – self-confidence my friends will call it.”
Edgar Allan Poe
21.
“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
22.
“Art is to look at not to criticize.”
Edgar Allan Poe
23.
“Mysteries force a man to think.”
Edgar Allan Poe
24.
“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
25.
“I am above the weakness of seeking to establish a sequence of cause and effect, between the disaster and the atrocity.”
Edgar Allan Poe
26.
“There is no exquisite beauty… without some strangeness in the proportion.”
Edgar Allan Poe
27.
“From childhood’s hour, I have not been. As others were, I have not seen. As others saw, I could not awaken. My heart to joy at the same tone. And all I loved, I loved alone.”
Edgar Allan Poe
28.
“To vilify a great man is the readiest way in which a little man can himself attain greatness.”
Edgar Allan Poe
29.
“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
30.
“The agony of my soul found vent in one loud, long and final scream of despair.”
Edgar Allan Poe
31.
“Music, when combined with a pleasurable idea, is poetry; music, without the idea, is simply music; the idea, without the music, is prose, from its very definitiveness.”
Edgar Allan Poe
32.
“Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.”
Edgar Allan Poe
33.
“With me poetry has not been a purpose, but a passion.”
Edgar Allan Poe
34.
“A million candles have burned themselves out. Still I read on.”
Edgar Allan Poe
35.
“In our endeavors to recall to memory something long forgotten, we often find ourselves upon the very verge of remembrance, without being able, in the end, to remember.”
Edgar Allan Poe
36.
“Imperceptibly the love of these discords grew upon me as my love of music grew stronger.”
Edgar Allan Poe
37.
“Books, indeed, were his sole luxuries”
Edgar Allan Poe
38.
“We had always dwelled together, beneath a tropical sun, in the Valley of the Many-Colored Grass.”
Edgar Allan Poe
39.
“As a poet and as a mathematician, he would reason well; as a mere mathematician, he could not have reasoned at all.”
Edgar Allan Poe
40.
“Philosophers have often held dispute
As to the seat of thought in man and brute
For that, the power of thought attends the latter
My friend, thy beau, hath made a settled matter,
And in spite of dogmas current in all ages,
One settled fact is better than ten sages.”
Edgar Allan Poe
41.
“For my own part, I have never had a thought which I could not set down in words, with even more distinctness than that with which I conceived it.”
Edgar Allan Poe
42.
“There are few persons, even among the calmest thinkers, who have not occasionally been startled into a vague yet thrilling half-credence in the supernatural, by coincidences of so seemingly marvelous a character that, as mere coincidences, the intellect has been unable to receive them.”
Edgar Allan Poe
43.
“Marking a book is literally an experience of your differences or agreements with the author. It is the highest respect you can pay him.”
Edgar Allan Poe
44.
“It will be found, in fact, that the ingenious are always fanciful, and the truly imaginative never otherwise than analytic.”
Edgar Allan Poe
45.
“That single thought is enough. The impulse increases to a wish, the wish to a desire, the desire to an uncontrollable longing, and the longing is indulged.”
Edgar Allan Poe
46.
“No pictorial or sculptural combinations of points of human loveliness, do more than approach the living and breathing human beauty as it gladdens our daily path.”
Edgar Allan Poe
47.
“Ah, not in knowledge is happiness, but in the acquisition of knowledge! In forever knowing, we are forever blessed; but to know all, were the curse of a friend.”
Edgar Allan Poe
48.
“I smiled,—for what had I to fear?”
Edgar Allan Poe
49.
“So resolute is the world to despise anything which carries with it an air of simplicity.”
Edgar Allan Poe
50.
“It is the object of our newspapers rather to create a sensation – to make a point – than to further the cause of truth.”
Edgar Allan Poe
51.
“A judge at common law may be an ordinary man; a good judge of a carpet must be a genius.”
Edgar Allan Poe
52.
“And rays of truth you cannot see are flashing thro’ eternity”
Edgar Allan Poe
53.
“The depth lies in the valleys where we seek her, and not upon the mountain-tops where she is found.”
Edgar Allan Poe
54.
“Who has not, a hundred times, found himself committing a vile or a silly action for no other reason than because he knows he should not?”
Edgar Allan Poe
55.
“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
56.
“It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain; but once conceived, it haunted me day and night.”
Edgar Allan Poe
57.
“That man is not truly brave who is afraid either to seem or to be, when it suits him, a coward.”
Edgar Allan Poe
58.
“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
59.
“All suffering originates from craving, from attachment, from desire.”
Edgar Allan Poe
60.
“You will observe that the stories told are all about money-seekers, not about money-finders.”
Edgar Allan Poe
61.
“The Prefect, who had a fashion of calling everything “odd” that was beyond his comprehension, and thus lived amid an absolute legion of “oddities.”
Edgar Allan Poe
62.
“[A] fitful strain of melancholy which will ever be found inseperable from the perfection of the beautiful.”
Edgar Allan Poe
63.
“Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,”
Edgar Allan Poe
64.
“To him, who still would gaze upon the glory of the summer sun, there comes, when that sun will from him part, a sullen hopelessness of heart.”
Edgar Allan Poe
65.
“We gave him a hearty welcome, for there was nearly half as much of the entertaining as of the contemptible about the man..”
Edgar Allan Poe
66.
“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
67.
“And so being young and dipped in folly I fell in love with melancholy.”
Edgar Allan Poe
68.
“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
69.
“If a poem hasn’t ripped apart your soul; you haven’t experienced poetry.”
Edgar Allan Poe
70.
“When, indeed, men speak of Beauty, they mean, precisely, not a quality, as is supposed, but an effect – they refer, in short, just to that intense and pure elevation of soul – not of intellect, or of heart.”
Edgar Allan Poe
71.
“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
72.
“Yet we met; and fate bound us together at the altar, 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
73.
“To be thoroughly conversant with Man’s heart, is to take our final lesson in the iron-clasped volume of Despair”
Edgar Allan Poe
74.
“Actually, I do have doubts, all the time. Any thinking person does. There are so many sides to every question.”
Edgar Allan Poe
75.
“And so, all the night-tide, I lay down the side, of my darling, my darling, my life, and my bride, in the sepulcher there by the sea, in her tomb by the surrounding sea.”
Edgar Allan Poe
76.
“The rain came down upon my head – Unshelter’d. And the wind rendered me mad and deaf and blind.”
Edgar Allan Poe
77.
“There seemed a deep sense of life and joy about all; and although no airs blew from out the Heavens, yet everything had motion through the gentle sweepings to and fro of innumerable butterflies, that might have been mistaken for tulips with wings.”
Edgar Allan Poe
78.
“I have not only labored solely for the benefit of others but have been forced to model my thoughts at the will of men whose imbecility was evident to all but themselves”
Edgar Allan Poe
79.
“His heart is a suspended lute; As soon as you touch it, it resonates.”
Edgar Allan Poe
80.
“Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality.”
Edgar Allan Poe
81.
“For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams”
Edgar Allan Poe
82.
“When I was young and filled with folly, I fell in love with melancholy”
Edgar Allan Poe
83.
“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
84.
“For passion must, with youth, expire.”
Edgar Allan Poe
85.
“To observe attentively is to remember distinctly.”
Edgar Allan Poe
86.
“To conceive the horror of my sensations is, I presume, utterly impossible; yet a curiosity to penetrate the mysteries of these awful regions predominates even over my despair, and will reconcile me to the most hideous aspect of death.”
Edgar Allan Poe
87.
“The most expuisite beauty has strangeness in its proportions.”
Edgar Allan Poe
88.
“A mystery, and a dream, should my early life seem.”
Edgar Allan Poe
89.
“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
90.
“Stupidity is a talent for misconception.”
Edgar Allan Poe
91.
“It was well said of a certain German book that it does not permit itself to be read.”
Edgar Allan Poe
92.
“We gave the Future to the winds, and slumbered tranquility in the Present, weaving the dull world around us into dreams.”
Edgar Allan Poe
93.
“For eyes we have no models in the remotely antique.”
Edgar Allan Poe
94.
“I went as a passenger, having no other inducement than a kind of nervous restlessness which haunted me as a friend”
Edgar Allan Poe
95.
“Man’s real life is happy, chiefly because he is ever expecting that it soon will be so.”
Edgar Allan Poe
96.
“There are few persons who have not, at some period of their lives, amused themselves in retracing the steps by which particular conclusions of their own minds have been attained.”
Edgar Allan Poe
97.
“And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.”
Edgar Allan Poe
98.
“I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.”
Edgar Allan Poe
99.
“Years of love have been forgot, in the hatred of a minute.”
Edgar Allan Poe
100.
“I wish I could write as mysterious as a cat.”
Edgar Allan Poe
I hope you enjoyed this collection of inspirational Edgar Allan Poe quotes. How has your life been touched by the famous American author?
Stay victorious!
