Top 500 Edgar Allan Poe Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “Sleep, those little slices of death – how I loathe them.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

52. “I intend to put up with nothing that I can put down.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

53. “A lie travels round the world while truth is putting her boots on.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

54. “You call it hope-that fire of fire! It is but agony of desire.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

55. “That which you mistake for madness is but an overacuteness of the senses.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

56. “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

57. “The world is a great ocean, upon which we encounter more tempestuous storms than calms.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

58. “If you wish to forget anything on the spot, make a note that this thing is to be remembered.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

59. “How many good books suffer neglect through the inefficiency of their beginnings!”

— Edgar Allan Poe

60. “All religion, my friend, is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination, and poetry.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

61. “The past is a pebble in my shoe.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

62. “But our love was stronger by far than the love Of those who were older than we Of many far wiser than we And neither the angels in heaven above, Nor the demons down under the sea, Can ever dissever my soul from the soul Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

63. “And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor, Shall be lifted – Nevermore!”

— Edgar Allan Poe

64. “With me poetry has not been a purpose, but a passion.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

65. “Of puns it has been said that those who most dislike them are those who are least able to utter them.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

66. “If you run out of ideas follow the road; you’ll get there.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

67. “I felt that I breathed an atmosphere of sorrow.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

68. “Men of genius are far more abundant than is supposed. In fact, to appreciate thoroughly the work of what we call genius, is to possess all the genius by which the work was produced.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

69. “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

70. “It was night, and the rain fell; and falling, it was rain, but, having fallen, it was blood.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

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

— Edgar Allan Poe

72. “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

73. “To die laughing must be the most glorious of all glorious deaths!”

— Edgar Allan Poe

74. “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

75. “If a man deceives me once, shame on him; if he deceives me twice, shame on me.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

76. “Even in the grave, all is not lost.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

77. “Indeed, there is an eloquence in true enthusiasm that is not to be doubted.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

78. “A man’s grammar, like Caesar’s wife, should not only be pure, but above suspicion of impurity.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

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

— Edgar Allan Poe

80. “Beauty is the sole legitimate province of the poem.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

81. “The idea of God, infinity, or spirit stands for the possible attempt at an impossible conception.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

82. “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

83. “The plots of God are perfect. The Universe is a plot of God.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

84. “And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting...”

— Edgar Allan Poe

85. “Perversity is the human thirst for self-torture.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

86. “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

87. “Art is to look at not to criticize.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

88. “Convinced myself, I seek not to convince.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

89. “It is the nature of truth in general, as of some ores in particular, to be richest when most superficial.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

90. “I heed not that my earthly lot Hath – little of Earth in it – That years of love have been forgot In the hatred of a minute: – I mourn not that the desolate Are happier, sweet, than I, But that you sorrow for my fate Who am a passer by.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

91. “The rain came down upon my head – Unshelter’d. And the wind rendered me mad and deaf and blind.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

92. “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

93. “And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

94. “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

95. “The fever called “living” Is conquer’d at last.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

96. “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

97. “I stand amid the roar Of a surf-tormented shore, And I hold within my hand Grains of golden sand- How few! yet how they creep Through my fingers to the deep, While I weep- while I weep!”

— Edgar Allan Poe

98. “Man’s real life is happy, chiefly because he is ever expecting that it soon will be so.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

99. “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

100. “Invisible things are the only realities.”

— Edgar Allan Poe