Top 500 Edgar Allan Poe Quotes (2025 Update)
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451. “We might say that from the impious love of liberty has been born a new tyranny – the tyranny of fools – which, in its insensible ferocity, resembles the idol of Juggernaut.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

452. “Wyatt’s two sisters I knew very well, and most amiable and clever girls they were. His wife he had newly married, and I had never yet seen her. He had often talked about her in my presence, however, and in his usual style of enthusiasm. He described her as of surpassing beauty, wit, and accomplishment. I was, therefore, quite anxious to make her acquaintance.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

453. “Who knoweth the mysteries of the will, with its vigor? For God is but a great will pervading all things by nature of its intentness. Man doth not yield him to the angels, nor unto death utterly, save only through the weakness of his feeble will.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

454. “Death by the visitation of God.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

455. “The abbey was amply provisioned. With such precautions the courtiers might bid defiance to contagion. The external world could take care of itself. In the meantime it was folly to grieve, or to think. The prince had provided all the appliances of pleasure. There were buffoons, there were improvisatori, there were ballet-dancers, there were musicians, there was Beauty, there was wine. All these and security were within. Without was the “Red Death.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

456. “And spite of all dogmas, current in all ages, One settled fact is better than ten sages.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

457. “Nothing is more hateful to wisdom than excessive cleverness.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

458. “But my disease grew upon me – for what disease is like Alcohol!”

— Edgar Allan Poe

459. “I loathed her with a hatred belonging more to demon than to man.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

460. “She came and departed as a shadow.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

461. “Ugh! ugh! ugh! – ugh! ugh! ugh! – ugh! ugh! ugh! – ugh! ugh! ugh! – ugh! ugh! ugh!”

— Edgar Allan Poe

462. “In truth, the man who would behold aright the glory of God upon earth must in solitude behold that glory.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

463. “Without Ligeia I was but as a child groping benighted.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

464. “I never knew any one so keenly alive to a joke as the king was.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

465. “For the love of God, Montresor!”

— Edgar Allan Poe

466. “It was, perhaps, the narrow limits to which he thus confined himself upon the guitar, which gave birth, in great measure, to the fantastic character of his performances.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

467. “So violent a rudeness, untenanted by any tangible form.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

468. “But the Prince Prospero was happy and dauntless and sagacious. When his dominions were half depopulated, he summoned to his presence a thousand hale and light-hearted friends from among the knights and dames of his court, and with these retired to the deep seclusion of one of his castellated abbeys.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

469. “Surely,” said I, “surely that is something at my window lattice; Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore –.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

470. “Eager vehemence of desire for life.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

471. “I became possessed with the keenest curiosity about the whirl itself... and my principal grief was that I should never be able to tell my old companions on shore about the mysteries I should see.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

472. “He is cool- cool as a cucumber.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

473. “Yet what business had I with hope?”

— Edgar Allan Poe

474. “What we term a long poem is, in fact, merely a succession of brief ones – that is to say, of brief poetical effects. It is needless to demonstrate that a poem is such only inasmuch as it intensely excites, by elevating the soul; and all intense excitements are, through a psychal necessity, brief.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

475. “Truth is not always in a well. In fact, as regards the more important knowledge, I do believe that she is invariably superficial.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

476. “And they hated her for her pride – But she grew in feeble health, And they love her – that she died.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

477. “I well, too well, understood that to think, in my situation, was to be lost.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

478. “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. The occupation is often full of interest and he who attempts it for the first time is astonished by the apparently illimitable distance and incoherence between the starting-point and the goal.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

479. “John Greely was the eldest and stoutest of the five, and had the reputation of being the strongest man, as well as best shot in Kentucky – – from which State they all came.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

480. “Between ingenuity and the analytic ability there exists a difference far greater, indeed, than that between the fancy and the imagination, but of a character very strictly analogous. It will be found, in fact, that the ingenious are always fanciful, and the truly imaginative never otherwise than analytic.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

481. “Then we sallied forth into the streets arm in arm, continuing the topics of the day, or roaming far and wide until a late hour, seeking, amid the wild lights and shadows of the populous city, that infinity of mental excitement which quiet observation can afford.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

482. “This apartment, which you no doubt profanely suppose to be the shop of Will Wimble the undertaker – a man whom we know not, and whose plebeian appellation has never before this night thwarted our royal ears – this apartment, I say, is the Dais-Chamber of our Palace, devoted to the councils of our kingdom, and to other sacred and lofty purposes.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

483. “As for Progress it was at one time quite a nuisance, but it never progressed.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

484. “Such weakness can scarcely be conceived, and to those who have never been similarly situated will, no doubt, appear unnatural;.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

485. “Who does not remember that, at such a time as this, the eye, like a shattered mirror, multiplies the images of its sorrow, and sees in innumerable far-off places, the wo which is close at hand?”

— Edgar Allan Poe

486. “And all I lov’d – I lov’d alone.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

487. “I am come of a race noted for vigor of fancy and ardor of passion. 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. They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

488. “I short I became a new man, and lived a man’s life. From that memorable night, I dismissed forever my apprehensions, and with them vanished the cataleptic disorder, of which, perhaps, they had been less the consequence than the cause.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

489. “When given bad news, most women of my station can afford to slump onto their divans, their china cups slipping from their fingers to the carpet, their hair falling prettily from its pins, their fourteen starched petticoats compacting with a plush crunch. I am not one of them.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

490. “I began to reflect how magnificent a thing it was to die in such a manner, and how foolish it was in me to think of so paltry a consideration as my own individual life, in view of so wonderful a manifestation of God’s power.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

491. “Let me call myself, for the present, Willam Wilson.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

492. “And the seraphs sob at vermin fangs.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

493. “But my disease grew upon me – for what disease is like Alcohol! – and at length even Pluto, who was now becoming old, and consequently somewhat peevish – even Pluto began to experience the effects of my ill temper.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

494. “I am not more sure that my soul lives, than I am that perverseness is one of the primitive impulses of the human heart –.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

495. “You will say, no doubt, using the language of the law, that ‘to make out my case,’ I should rather undervalue, than insist upon a full estimation of the activity required in this matter. This may be the practice in law, but it is not the usage of reason.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

496. “And again, and again, in secret communion with my own spirit, would I demand the questions “Who is he? – whence came he? – and what are his objects?” But no answer was there found.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

497. “No es que me atemorizara mirar cosas horribles, sino que me aterraba la idea de no ver nada.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

498. “If you still think me mad, you will think so no longer when I describe the wise precautions I took for the concealment of the body.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

499. “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

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

— Edgar Allan Poe