75 Edgar Allan Poe Quotes on Life, Love and Writing
Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe was an American writer, editor, poet and literary critic. The Boston native only lived until he was 40 years old, but he was one of the most famous literary pioneers. His body of work includes short stories, a novel and poetry, spanning romance, Gothic horror, fantasy, adventure, humor, parody and satire genres. So, it was quite easy to assemble 75 Edgar Allan Poe quotes to demonstrate his thoughts about life.
I remember reading Poe’s short story, The Tell-Tale Heart, in high school. I won’t spoil the story for you, but it’s a mixture of murder, hallucination and mental health. When you read an Edgar Allan Poe book or poem, be prepared for suspense, mystery and an overall thrill ride that keeps you wanting more. He was one of the early horror, science fiction and detective writers.
Several of Poe’s works have dark and complex themes, such as death, alcoholism, mental illness, murder and mourning. However, love was also an important aspect of Poe’s life. After all, he did marry his first cousin, who was half his age. He also had an unstable home life, losing his parents at a young age and having a strained relationship with his foster parents.
With everything he endured, he left us with quite a literary collection that’s meaningful and resonates to readers across generations. Enjoy these 75 Edgar Allan Poe quotes.
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Best Edgar Allan Poe Quotes
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1. “Art is to look at not to criticize.”
2. “Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality.”
3. “All religion, my friend, is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination and poetry.”
4. “Believe nothing you hear, and only one half that you see.”
5. “I have great faith in fools - self-confidence my friends will call it.”
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6. “I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.”
7. “They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.”
8. “I remained too much inside my head and ended up losing my mind.”
9. “With me poetry has not been a purpose, but a passion.”
10. “Literature is the most noble of professions. In fact, it is about the only one fit for a man. For my own part, there is no seducing me from the path.”
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11. “All that we see and seem is but a dream within a dream.”
12. “Books, indeed, were his sole luxuries.”
13. “All suffering originates from craving, from attachment, from desire.”
14. “Poetry is the rhythmical creation of beauty in words.”
15. “To die laughing must be the most glorious of all glorious deaths!”
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16. “I am a writer. Therefore, I am not sane.”
17. “When a madman appears thoroughly sane, indeed, it is high time to put him in a straight jacket.”
18. “The scariest monsters are the ones that lurk within our souls...”
19. “The eye, like a shattered mirror, multiplies the images of sorrow.”
20. “Actually, I do have doubts, all the time. Any thinking person does. There are so many sides to every question.”
21. “Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best have gone to their eternal rest.”
22. “I hold that a long poem does not exist. I maintain that the phrase, 'a long poem,' is simply a flat contradiction in terms.”
23. “A short story must have a single mood and every sentence must build towards it.”
24. “I would define, in brief, the poetry of words as the rhythmical creation of beauty.”
25. “And haven't I told you that what you mistake for madness is but over-acuteness of the senses.”
26. “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.”
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27. “If a poem hasn't ripped apart your soul; you haven't experienced poetry.”
28. “A man's grammar, like Caesar's wife, should not only be pure, but above suspicion of impurity.”
29. “I do believe God gave me a spark of genius, but He quenched it in misery.”
30. “I wish I could write as mysterious as a cat.”
31. “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.”
32. “The truth is, I am heartily sick of this life & of the nineteenth century in general. (I am convinced that every thing is going wrong).”
33. “Science has not yet taught us if madness is or is not the sublimity of the intelligence.”
34. “Lord help my poor soul.”
35. “It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain; but once conceived, it haunted me day and night.”
36. “To observe attentively is to remember distinctly.”
37. “Man's real life is happy, chiefly because he is ever expecting that it soon will be so.”
38. “I intend to put up with nothing that I can put down.”
39. “The secret of a poem, no less than a jest's prosperity, lies in the ear of him that hears it.”
40. “Happiness is not to be found in knowledge, but in the acquisition of knowledge.”
41. “I do not suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it.”
42. “The past is a pebble in my shoe.”
43. “But as, in ethics, evil is a consequence of good, so, in fact, out of joy is sorrow born. Either the memory of past bliss is the anguish of today, or the agonies which are have their origin in the ecstasies which might have been.”
44. “I was never kinder to the old man than during the whole week before I killed him.”
45. “If you wish to forget anything on the spot, make a note that this thing is to be remembered.”
46. "Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December, And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor."
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Edgar Allan Poe Love Quotes
47. “Years of love have been forgot, In the hatred of a minute.”
48. “Deep in earth my love is lying and I must weep alone.”
49. “We loved with a love that was more than love.”
50. “And so being young and dipped in folly I fell in love with melancholy.”
51. “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.”
52. “I was never really insane except upon occasions when my heart was touched.”
53. “Leave my loneliness unbroken”
54. “Tell me every terrible thing you ever did, and let me love you anyway.”
55. “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."
56. "It is a happiness to wonder; it is a happiness to dream.”
57. “Let me glimpse inside your velvet bones.”
58. “His heart is a suspended lute; As soon as you touch it, it resonates.”
59. “Love like mine can never be gotten over.”
60. “Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary.”
61. “There are chords in the hearts of the most reckless which cannot be touched without emotion.”
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62. “Beauty of whatever kind, in its supreme development, invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears.”
63. “There are some secrets which do not permit themselves to be told.”
64. “The death of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world.”
65. “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.”
66. “Men have called me mad; but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence.”
67. “Because it was my crime to have no one on Earth who cared for me, or loved me.”
68. “In the Heaven's above, the angels, whispering to one another, can find, among their burning terms of love, none so devotional as that of 'Mother.”
69. “I have no words — alas! — to tell. The loveliness of loving well!”
70. “I saw no heaven — but in her eyes.”
71. “Reaching out to her is like drinking from a memory.”
72. “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.”
73. “These were the days when my heart was volcanic.”
74. “That she loved me I should not have doubted; and I might have been easily aware that, in a bosom such as hers, love would have regained no ordinary passion."
75. “But in death only was I fully impressed with the strength of her affection.”
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