Top 400 Edgar Allan Poe Quotes (2023 Update)
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151. “To vilify a great man is the readiest way in which a little man can himself attain greatness.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

152. “The most natural, and, consequently, the truest and most intense of the human affections are those which arise in the heart as if by electric sympathy.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

153. “If you have never been at sea in a heavy gale, you can form no idea of the confusion of mind occasioned by wind and spry together. They blind, deafen, and strangle you, and take away all power of action or reflection.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

154. “The customs of the world are so many conventional follies.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

155. “Children are never too tender to be whipped. Like tough beefsteaks, the more you beat them, the more tender they become.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

156. “There are certain themes of which the interest is all-absorbing, but which are too entirely horrible for the purposes of legitimate fiction.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

157. “Finally on Sunday morning, October 7, 1849, “He became quiet and seemed to rest for a short time. Then, gently, moving his head,” he said, “Lord help my poor soul.” As he had lived so he died-in great misery and tragedy.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

158. “Books, indeed, were his sole luxuries.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

159. “The generous Critic fann’d the Poet’s fire, And taught the world with reason to admire.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

160. “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

161. “He is, as you say, a remarkable horse, a prodigious horse, although as you very justly observe, a suspicious and untractable character.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

162. “If any ambitious man have a fancy to revolutionize, at one effort, the universal world of human thought, human opinion, and human sentiment...”

— Edgar Allan Poe

163. “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

164. “I would define, in brief, the poetry of words as the rhythmical creation of beauty.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

165. “Once upon a midnight dreary.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

166. “In one case out of a hundred a point is excessively discussed because it is obscure; in the ninety-nine remaining it is obscure because it is excessively discussed.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

167. “The usual derivation of the word Metaphysics is not to be sustainedthe science is supposed to take its name from its superiority to physics. The truth is, that Aristotle’s treatise on Morals is next in succession to his Book of Physics.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

168. “Life is for the strong, to be lived by the strong and if need be, taken by the strong. The weak were put on earth to give the strong pleasure.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

169. “But tomorrow I die, and today I would unburden my soul.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

170. “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

171. “To those who have cherished an affection for a faithful and sagacious dog, I need hardly be at the trouble of explaining the nature or the intensity of the gratification thus derivable. 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

172. “Who entereth herein, a conqueror hath bin; Who slayeth the dragon, the shield he shall win.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

173. “Villains!” I shrieked, “dissemble no more! I admit the deed! – tear up the planks! – here, here! – it is the beating of his hideous heart!”

— Edgar Allan Poe

174. “It all depends on the robber’s knowledge of the loser’s knowledge of the robber. – Daupin.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

175. “Many years ago, I contracted an intimacy with a Mr. William Legrand. He was of an ancient Huguenot family, and had once been wealthy; but a series of misfortunes had reduced him to want.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

176. “I hold that a long poem does not exist. I maintain that the phrase, “a long poem,” is simply a flat contradiction in terms.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

177. “There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart – an unredeemed dreariness of thought which no goading of the imagination could torture into aught of the sublime.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

178. “Here I opened wide the door; – Darkness there, and nothing more.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

179. “Democracy is a very admirable form of government – for dogs.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

180. “Now this is the point. You fancy me a mad. Madmen know nothing. But you should have seen me. You should have seen how wisely I proceeded...”

— Edgar Allan Poe

181. “The analytical power should not be confounded with simple ingenuity; for while the analyst is necessarily ingenious, the ingenious man is often remarkably incapable of analysis.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

182. “There is no passion in nature so demoniacally impatient, as that of him who, shuddering upon the edge of a precipice, thus meditates a Plunge.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

183. “The writer who neglects punctuation, or mispunctuates, is liable to be misunderstood for the want of merely a comma, it often occurs that an axiom appears a paradox, or that a sarcasm is converted into a sermonoid.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

184. “Tell me truly, I implore – Is there – is there balm in Gilead? – tell me – tell me, I implore!”

— Edgar Allan Poe

185. “Dark draperies hung upon the walls. The general furniture was profuse, comfortless, antique, and tattered. Many books and musical instruments lay scattered about, but failed to give any vitality to the scene. I felt that I breathed an atmosphere of sorrow. An air of stern, deep, and irredeemable gloom hung over and pervaded all.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

186. “I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell. How, then, am I mad? Hearken! and observe how healthily – how calmly I can tell you the whole story.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

187. “Ah, bear in mind this garden was enchanted!”

— Edgar Allan Poe

188. “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

189. “Scorching my seared heart with a pain, not hell shall make me fear again.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

190. “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

191. “I have no words alas! to tell the loveliness of loving well.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

192. “In the tale proper – where there is no space for development of character or for great profusion and variety of incident – mere construction is, of course, far more imperatively demanded than in the novel.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

193. “We allude to the short prose narrative, requiring from a half hour to one or two hours in its perusal.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

194. “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

195. “I fashion the expression of my face, as accurately as possible, in accordance with the expression of his, and then wait to see what thoughts or sentiments arise in my mind or heart, as if to match or correspond with the expression.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

196. “Ah, broken is the golden bowl! the spirit flown forever! Let the bell toll!-a saintly soul floats on the Stygian river; And, Guy de Vere, hast thou no tear?-weep now or nevermore!”

— Edgar Allan Poe

197. “Boston: Their hotels are bad. Their pumpkin pies are delicious. Their poetry is not so good.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

198. “At midnight, in the month of June, I stand beneath the mystic moon.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

199. “The old man,” I said at length, “is the type and the genius of deep crime. He refuses to be alone. He is the man of the crowd. It will be in vain to follow, for I shall learn no more of him, nor of his deeds.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

200. “We gave the Future to the winds, and slumbered tranquilly in the Present, weaving the dull world around us into dreams.”

— Edgar Allan Poe