Edgar Allan Poe (Writer)

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 — From the same source I have not taken My sorrow — I could not awaken My heart to joy at the same tone — And all I lov'd — I lov'd alone —

— Edgar Allan Poe art

And the cloud that took the form (When the rest of Heaven was blue) Of a demon in my view.

— Edgar Allan Poe heaven

Hast thou not torn the Naiad from her flood, The Elfin from the green grass, and from me The summer dream beneath the tamarind tree?

— Edgar Allan Poe dream

It is with literature as with law or empire — an established name is an estate in tenure, or a throne in possession.

— Edgar Allan Poe literature

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 poetry

Helen, thy beauty is to me Like those Nicean barks of yore, That gently, o'er a perfumed sea, The weary, wayworn wanderer bore To his own native shore. On desperate seas long wont to roam, Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,Thy Naiad airs have brought me home To the glory that was Greece And the grandeur that was Rome.

— Edgar Allan Poe beauty

Yes, Heaven is thine; but this Is a world of sweets and sours; Our flowers are merely—flowers.

— Edgar Allan Poe world

If I could dwell Where Israfel Hath dwelt, and he where I, He might not sing so wildly well A mortal melody, While a bolder note than this might swell From my lyre within the sky.

— Edgar Allan Poe sin

Thou wast all that to me, love, For which my soul did pine...

— Edgar Allan Poe love

Come! let the burial rite be read — the funeral song be sung! — An anthem for the queenliest dead that ever died so young — A dirge for her the doubly dead in that she died so young.

— Edgar Allan Poe lies

Vastness! and Age! and Memories of Eld! Silence! and Desolation! and dim Night! I feel ye now — I feel ye in your strength.

— Edgar Allan Poe strength

Thou wast that all to me, love, For which my soul did pine — A green isle in the sea, love, A fountain and a shrine, All wreathed with fairy fruits and flowers, And all the flowers were mine.

— Edgar Allan Poe love

And all my days are trances, And all my nightly dreams Are where thy grey eye glances, And where thy footstep gleams — In what ethereal dances, By what eternal streams.

— Edgar Allan Poe dreams

Convinced myself, I seek not to convince.

— Edgar Allan Poe self

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 to-day, or the agonies which are have their origin in the ecstasies which might have been.

— Edgar Allan Poe joy

There is then no analogy whatever between the operations of the Chess-Player, and those of the calculating machine of Mr. , and if we choose to call the former a pure machine we must be prepared to admit that it is, beyond all comparison, the most wonderful of the inventions of mankind.

— Edgar Allan Poe hate

During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country, and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher.

— Edgar Allan Poe self

In the greenest of our valleys By good angels tenanted, Once a fair and stately palace — Radiant palace — reared its head.

— Edgar Allan Poe good

This—all this—was in the olden Time long ago.

— Edgar Allan Poe time

While, like a ghastly rapid river, Through the pale door A hideous throng rush out forever And laugh — but smile no more.

— Edgar Allan Poe smile

Few persons can be made to believe that it is not quite an easy thing to invent a method of secret writing which shall baffle investigation. Yet it may be roundly asserted that human ingenuity cannot concoct a cipher which human ingenuity cannot resolve.

— Edgar Allan Poe writing

They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.

— Edgar Allan Poe dream

Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.

— Edgar Allan Poe death

Had the routine of our life at this place been known to the world, we should have been regarded as madmen —; although, perhaps, as madmen of a harmless nature.

— Edgar Allan Poe life

"The best chess-player in Christendom may be little more than the best player of chess; but proficiency in whist implies capacity for success in all these more important undertakings where mind struggles with mind."

— Edgar Allan Poe success

To observe attentively is to remember distinctly.

— Edgar Allan Poe

And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.

— Edgar Allan Poe death

The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins?

— Edgar Allan Poe best

While the angels, all pallid and wan, Uprising, unveiling, affirm That the play is the tragedy, "Man", And its hero the Conqueror Worm.

— Edgar Allan Poe sin

Man is an animal that diddles, and there is no animal that diddles but man.

— Edgar Allan Poe man

By a route obscure and lonely, Haunted by ill angels only, Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT, On a black throne reigns upright,I have reached these lands but newly From an ultimate dim Thule — From a wild weird clime that lieth, sublime, Out of SPACE — out of TIME.

— Edgar Allan Poe weird

With me poetry has been not a purpose, but a passion; and the passions should be held in reverence: they must not — they cannot at will be excited, with an eye to the paltry compensations, or the more paltry commendations, of mankind.

— Edgar Allan Poe poetry

Thou wouldst be loved? — then let thy heart From its present pathway part not! Being everything which now thou art, Be nothing which thou art not. So with the world thy gentle ways,Thy grace, thy more than beauty, Shall be an endless theme of praise, And love — a simple duty.

— Edgar Allan Poe love

For the love of God Montresor!

— Edgar Allan Poe love

The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could; but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge. You, who so well know the nature of my soul, will not suppose, however, that I gave utterance to a threat. At length I would be avenged; this was a point definitely settled — but the very definitiveness with which it was resolved precluded the idea of risk. I must not only punish, but punish with impunity. 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 nature

Beauty is the sole legitimate province of the poem.

— Edgar Allan Poe poem

The death then of a beautiful woman is unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world, and equally is it beyond doubt that the lips best suited for such topic are those of a bereaved lover.

— Edgar Allan Poe love

The object, Truth, or the satisfaction of the intellect, and the object, Passion, or the excitement of the heart, are, although attainable, to a certain extent, in poetry, far more readily attainable in prose.

— Edgar Allan Poe poetry

Can it be fancied that Deity ever vindictively Made in his image a mannikin merely to madden it?

— Edgar Allan Poe man

Gaily bedight, A gallant knight, In sunshine and in shadow, Had journeyed long, Singing a song, In search of Eldorado.

— Edgar Allan Poe journey

There is no oath which seems to me so sacred as that sworn by the all-divine love I bear you. — By this love, then, and by the God who reigns in Heaven, I swear to you that my soul is incapable of dishonor — that, with the exception of occasional follies and excesses which I bitterly lament, but to which I have been driven by intolerable sorrow, and which are hourly committed by others without attracting any notice whatever — I can call to mind no act of my life which would bring a blush to my cheek — or to yours. If I have erred at all, in this regard, it has been on the side of what the world would call a Quixotic sense of the honorable — of the chivalrous.

— Edgar Allan Poe love

You are not wrong, who deem That my days have been a dream...

— Edgar Allan Poe dream

Depend upon it, after all, Thomas, 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.

— Edgar Allan Poe art

All that we see or seem Is but a dream within a dream.

— Edgar Allan Poe dream

"Over the Mountains Of the Moon, Down the Valley of the Shadow, Ride, boldly ride," The shade replied, — "If you seek for Eldorado!"

— Edgar Allan Poe you

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 hope

O God! Can I not saveOne from the pitiless wave?Is all that we see or seem But a dream within a dream?

— Edgar Allan Poe dream

Thank Heaven! the crisis — The danger is past, And the lingering illness Is over at last — And the fever called "Living" Is conquered at last.

— Edgar Allan Poe past

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

— Edgar Allan Poe time

Hear the mellow wedding bells Golden bells! What a world of happiness their harmony foretells Through the balmy air of night How they ring out their delight!

— Edgar Allan Poe happiness

As for myself, I am simply Hop-Frog, the jester — and this is my last jest.

— Edgar Allan Poe self

I attacked with great resolution the editorial matter, and, reading it from beginning to end without understanding a syllable, conceived the possibility of its being Chinese, and so re-read it from the end to the beginning, but with no more satisfactory result.

— Edgar Allan Poe reading

These fellows, knowing the extravagant gullibility of the age, set their wits to work in the imagination of improbable possibilities — of odd accidents, as they term them; but to a reflecting intellect (like mine," I added, in parenthesis, putting my forefinger unconsciously to the side of my nose,) "to a contemplative understanding such as I myself possess, it seems evident at once that the marvelous increase of late in these 'odd accidents' is by far the oddest accident of all. For my own part, I intend to believe nothing henceforward that has anything of the 'singular' about it.

— Edgar Allan Poe war

Lo! Death has reared himself a throne In a strange city lying alone Far down within the dim West, Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best Have gone to their eternal rest.

— Edgar Allan Poe self

So blend the turrets and shadows there That all seem pendulous in air, While from a proud tower in the town Death looks gigantically down.

— Edgar Allan Poe end

And when, amid no earthly moans, Down, down that town shall settle hence, Hell, rising from a thousand thrones, Shall do it reverence.

— Edgar Allan Poe art

TRUE! — nervous — very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad?

— Edgar Allan Poe you

Object there was none. Passion there was none. I loved the old man. He had never wronged me. He had never given me insult. For his gold I had no desire. I think it was his eye! yes, it was this! One of his eyes resembled that of a vulture — a pale blue eye, with a film over it. Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold; and so by degrees — very gradually — I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye for ever.

— Edgar Allan Poe love

And now have I not told you that what you mistake for madness is but over-acuteness of the senses? -- now, I say, there came to my ears a low, dull, quick sound, such as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton. I knew that sound too. It was the beating of the old man's heart. It increased my fury, as the beating of a drum stimulates the soldier into courage.

— Edgar Allan Poe art

If you still think me mad, you will think so no longer when I describe the wise precautions I took for the concealment of the body. The night waned, and I worked hastily, but in silence. First of all I dismembered the corpse. I cut off the head and the arms and the legs.

— Edgar Allan Poe work

"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 art

To-morrow I die, and to-day I would unburthen my soul.

— Edgar Allan Poe soul

For the most wild, yet most homely narrative which I am about to pen, I neither expect nor solicit belief. Mad indeed would I be to expect it, in a case where my very senses reject their own evidence. Yet, mad am I not — and very surely do I not dream. But to-morrow I die, and to-day I would unburthen my soul.

— Edgar Allan Poe soul

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 love

I grew, day by day, more moody, more irritable, more regardless of the feelings of others. I suffered myself to use intemperate language to my wife. At length, I even offered her personal violence.

— Edgar Allan Poe language

One night, returning home, much intoxicated, from one of my haunts about town, I fancied that the cat avoided my presence. I seized him; when, in his fright at my violence, he inflicted a slight wound upon my hand with his teeth. 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 fiber of my frame. I took from my waistcoat-pocket a penknife, opened it, grasped the poor beast by the throat, and deliberately cut one of its eyes from the socket!

— Edgar Allan Poe soul

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 times, found himself committing a vile or a stupid action, for no other reason than because he knows he should not? Have we not a perpetual inclination, in the teeth of our best judgement, to violate that which is Law, merely because we understand it to be such?

— Edgar Allan Poe time

Beneath the pressure of torments such as these, the feeble remnant of the good within me succumbed. Evil thoughts became my sole intimates — the darkest and most evil of thoughts. The moodiness of my usual temper increased to hatred of all things and of all mankind; while, from the sudden, frequent, and ungovernable outbursts of a fury to which I now blindly abandoned myself, my uncomplaining wife, alas! was the most usual and the most patient of sufferers.

— Edgar Allan Poe men

It is impossible to describe, or to imagine, the deep, the blissful sense of relief which the absence of the detested creature occasioned in my bosom. It did not make its appearance during the night — and thus for one night at least, since its introduction into the house, I soundly and tranquilly slept; aye, slept even with the burden of murder upon my soul!

— Edgar Allan Poe soul

For one instant the party upon the stairs remained motionless, through extremity of terror and of awe. In the next, a dozen stout arms were toiling at the wall. It fell bodily. The corpse, already greatly decayed and clotted with gore, stood erect before the eyes of the spectators. Upon its head, with red extended mouth and solitary eye of fire, sat the hideous beast whose craft had seduced me into murder, and whose informing voice had consigned me to the hangman. I had walled the monster up within the tomb!

— Edgar Allan Poe art

First published in the Democratic Review

— Edgar Allan Poe

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

— Edgar Allan Poe you

After reading all that has been written, and after thinking all that can be thought on the topics of God and the soul, the man who has a right to say that he thinks at all, will find himself face to face with the conclusion that, on these topics, the most profound thought is that which can be the least easily distinguished from the most superficial sentiment.

— Edgar Allan Poe time

A strong argument for the religion of Christ is this — that offences against Charity are about the only ones which men on their death-beds can be made, not to understand, but to feel, as crime.

— Edgar Allan Poe death

If any ambitious man have a fancy to revolutionize at one effort the universal world of human thought, human opinion, and human sentiment, the opportunity is his own — the road to immortal renown lies straight, open, and unencumbered before him. All that he has to do is to write and publish a very little book. Its title should be simple — a few plain words — "My Heart Laid Bare." But — this little book must be true to its title.

— Edgar Allan Poe time

How many good books suffer neglect through the inefficiency of their beginnings!

— Edgar Allan Poe books

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

— Edgar Allan Poe books

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 soul

I have great faith in fools — self-confidence my friends will call it.

— Edgar Allan Poe faith

That man is not truly brave who is afraid either to seem or to be, when it suits him, a coward.

— Edgar Allan Poe war

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary...

— Edgar Allan Poe night

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 man

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December; And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.

— Edgar Allan Poe dying

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.

— Edgar Allan Poe fear

Sorrow for the lost Lenore — For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore — Nameless here for evermore.

— Edgar Allan Poe angels

And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain Thrilled me — filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before.

— Edgar Allan Poe sad

Perched upon a bust of Pallas, just above my chamber door,— Perched, and sat, and nothing more.

— Edgar Allan Poe

"Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the Nightly shore — Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore!" Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."

— Edgar Allan Poe night

"Doubtless," said I, "what it utters is its only stock and store, Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore.

— Edgar Allan Poe happy

Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."

— Edgar Allan Poe

"Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil! — prophet still, if bird or devil!"

— Edgar Allan Poe evil

"Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's Plutonian shore! Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken! Leave my loneliness unbroken! — quit the bust above my door! Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!" Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."

— Edgar Allan Poe art

And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door.

— Edgar Allan Poe

And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor Shall be lifted — nevermore!

— Edgar Allan Poe soul

The skies they were ashen and sober; The leaves they were crisped and sere — The leaves they were withering and sere; It was night in the lonesome October Of my most immemorial year.

— Edgar Allan Poe night

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