Top 500 Edgar Allan Poe Quotes (2025 Update)
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201. “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

202. “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

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

— Edgar Allan Poe

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

— Edgar Allan Poe

205. “There are some qualities, some incorporate things, that have a double life, which thus is made. A type os twin entity which springs from matter and light, envinced in solid and shade.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

206. “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

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

— Edgar Allan Poe

208. “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

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

— Edgar Allan Poe

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

— Edgar Allan Poe

211. “His heart is a suspended lute; As soon as you touch it, it resonates.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

212. “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

213. “I have graven it within the hills, and my vengeance upon the dust within the rock.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

214. “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

215. “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

216. “Chi sogna di giorno conosce molte cose che sfuggono a chi sogna solo di notte.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

217. “The depth lies in the valleys where we seek her, and not upon the mountain-tops where she is found.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

218. “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

219. “As the strong man exults in his physical ability, delighting in such exercises as call his muscles into action, so glories the analyst in that moral activity which disentangles.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

220. “It was well said of a certain German book that ‘er lasst sich nicht lesen” – it does not permit itself to be read.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

221. “Misery is manifold. The wretchedness of earth is multiform.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

222. “One morning, in cool blood, I slipped a noose about its neck and hung it to the limb of a tree; – hung it with the tears streaming from my eyes, and with the bitterest remorse at my heart; – hung it because I knew that it had loved me, and because I felt it had given me no reason of offence; – hung it because I knew that in so doing I was committing a sin.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

223. “I could have clasped the red walls to my bosom as a garment of eternal peace. “Death,” I said, “any death but that of the pit!” Fool! might I have not known that into the pit it was the object of the burning iron to urge me?”

— Edgar Allan Poe

224. “All in vain; because Death, in approaching him had stalked with his black shadow before him, and enveloped the victim. And it was the mournful influence of the unperceived shadow that caused him to feel – although he neither saw nor heard – to feel the presence of my head within the room.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

225. “I have often been reproached with the aridity of my genius; a deficiency of imagination has been imputed to me as a crime; and the Pyrrhonism of my opinions has at all times rendered me notorious.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

226. “Nothing further then he uttered – not a feather then he fluttered – Till I scarcely more than muttered, “Other friends have flown before – On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown before.” Then the bird said, “Nevermore.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

227. “I have said that the sole effect of my somewhat childish experiment – that of looking down within the tarn – had been to deepen the first singular impression. There can be no doubt that the consciousness of the rapid increase of my superstition – for why should I not so term it? – served mainly to accelerate the increase itself. Such, I have long known, is the paradoxical law of all sentiments having terror as a basis.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

228. “The fury of a demon instantly possessed me. I knew myself no longer. My original soul seemed, at once, to take its flight from my body; and a more than fiendish malevolence, gin-nurtured, thrilled every fibre of my frame.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

229. “The antique volume which I had taken up was the “Mad Trist” of Sir Launcelot Canning; but I had called it a favorite of Usher’s more in sad jest than in earnest; for, in truth, there is little in its uncouth and unimaginative prolixity which could have had interest for the lofty and spiritual ideality of my friend.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

230. “And then there stole into my fancy, like a rich musical note, the thought of what sweet rest there must be in the grave.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

231. “I blush, I burn, I shudder, while I pen the damnable atrocity.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

232. “Whether people grow fat by joking, or whether there is something in fat itself which predisposes to a joke, I have never been quite able to determine...”

— Edgar Allan Poe

233. “Other friends have flown before – On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown before.” Then the bird said, “Nevermore.” Startled.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

234. “Leave my loneliness unbroken! – quit the bust above my door!”

— Edgar Allan Poe

235. “Either the memory of past bliss is the anguish of to-day; or the agonies which are have their origins in ecstasies which might have been.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

236. “I seemed to be upon the verge of comprehension, without the power to comprehend as men, at time, find themselves upon the brink of rememberance, without being able, in the end, to remember.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

237. “I call to mind flatness and dampness; and then all is madness – the madness of a memory which busies itself among forbidden things.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

238. “For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

239. “I smiled, – for what had I to fear?”

— Edgar Allan Poe

240. “Every moment of the night Forever changing places And they put out the star-light With the breath from their pale faces.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

241. “In efforts to soar above our nature, we invariably fall below it.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

242. “How often we forget all time, when lone Admiring Nature’s universal throne; Her woods – her wilds – her mountains – the intense Reply of HERS to OUR intelligence!”

— Edgar Allan Poe

243. “My next thought concerned the choice of an impression, or effect, to be conveyed: and here I may as well observe that, throughout the construction, I kept steadily in view the design.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

244. “My heart beat calmly as that of one who slumbers in innocence.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

245. “Reaching out to her is like drinking from a memory.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

246. “What chance – what one event brought this evil thing to pass, bear with me while I relate. Death approaches; and the shadow which foreruns him has thrown a softening influence over my spirit. I long, in passing through the dim valley, for the sympathy – I had nearly said for the pity – of my fellow men. I would fain have them believe that I have been, in some measure, the slave of circumstances beyond human control.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

247. “True! – nervous – very, very nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad?”

— Edgar Allan Poe

248. “The higher powers of the reflective intellect are more decidedly and more usefully tasked by the unostentatious game of draughts than by all the elaborate frivolity of chess.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

249. “It was night, and the rain fell; and falling, it was rain, but, having fallen, it was blood. And I stood in the morass among the tall and the rain fell upon my head-and the lilies sighed one unto the other in the solemnity of their desolation.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

250. “But Psyche uplifting her finger said: Sadly this star I mistrust.”

— Edgar Allan Poe