Quotes by Edgar Allan Poe

About Edgar Allan Poe:

Edgar Allan Poe is generally considered the inventor of the detective fiction genre. He is further credited with contributing to the emerging genre of science fiction. He was the first well-known American writer to try to earn a living through writing alone, resulting in a financially difficult life and career.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

From the dim regions beyond the mountains at the upper end of our encircled domain, there crept out a narrow and deep river, brighter than all save the eyes of Eleonora; and, winding stealthily about in mazy courses, it passed away, at length, throug...

Edgar Allan Poe

You call it hope — that fire of fire! It is but agony of desire.

Edgar Allan Poe

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore — While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.

Edgar Allan Poe

And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door; And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming, And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the...

Edgar Allan Poe

I have no words — alas! — to tell The loveliness of loving well!

Edgar Allan Poe

You will observe that the stories told are all about money-seekers, not about money-finders.

Edgar Allan Poe

Son front, quoique peu ridé, semble porter le sceau d'une myriade d'années. Ses cheveux gris sont des archives du passé et ses yeux, plus gris encore, sont des sibylles de l'avenir.

Edgar Allan Poe

Elf made his way fuzzily back to the drawer, trying to think nasty thoughts about his tormentor (Mungo the dog) but he couldn't, as he was too little and his mind was formless and without messages. ( "Elf" the tiny kitten Mungo tormented )

Edgar Allan Poe

Yet mad I am not...and very surely do I not dream.

Edgar Allan Poe

Yet I am not more sure that my soul lives, than I am that perverseness is one of the primitive impulses of the human heart - one of the indivisible primary faculties, or sentiments, which give direction to the character of Man. Who has not, a hundred...

Edgar Allan Poe

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

Who has not, a hundred times, found himself committing a vile or silly action for no other reason than because he knows he should ? Have we not a perpetual inclination, in the teeth of our best judgement, to violate that which is , merely because we ...

Edgar Allan Poe

How is it that from beauty I have derived a type of unloveliness?—from the covenant of peace, a simile of sorrow? But as, in ethics, evil is a consequence of good, so, in fact, out of joy is sorrow born.

Edgar Allan Poe

To muse for long unwearied hours with my attention riveted to some frivolous device upon the margin, or in the typography of a book — to become absorbed for the better part of a summer's day in a quaint shadow falling aslant upon the tapestry, or u...

Edgar Allan Poe

I continued, as was my wont, to smile in his face, and he did not perceive that my smile now was at the thought of his immolation.

Edgar Allan Poe

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 ...

Edgar Allan Poe

And here, in thought, to thee- In thought that can alone, Ascend thy empire and so be A partner of thy throne, By winged Fantasy, My embassy is given, Till secrecy shall knowledge be In the environs of Heaven.

Edgar Allan Poe

From childhood's hour I have not been As others were - I have not seen As others saw - I could not bring My passions from a common spring -

Edgar Allan Poe

For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams Of the beautiful Annabel Lee; And the stars never rise but i feel the bright eyes Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.

Edgar Allan Poe

If we cannot comprehend God in his visible works, how then in his inconceivable thoughts, that call the works into being?

Edgar Allan Poe

Author Bio

  • NameEdgar Allan Poe
  • DescriptionAmerican author, poet, editor and literary critic
  • AliasesPoe
  • BornJanuary 19, 1809
  • DiedOctober 7, 1849
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionPoet; Writer; Essayist; Literary Critic