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Edgar Allan Poe
119 quotes
“A dark unfathom'd tide Of interminable pride — A mystery, and a dream, Should my early life seem.”
Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) said by 1849 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Imitation", Tamerlane and Other Poems (1884).
“O, human love! thou spirit given, On Earth, of all we hope in Heaven!”
Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) said by 1849 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Tamerlane", l. 177 (1884).
“The happiest day — the happiest hour My sear'd and blighted heart hath known, The highest hope of pride and power, I feel hath flown.”
Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) said by 1849 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Happiest Day", st. 1 (1884).
“Sound loves to revel in a summer night.”
Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) first seen 1829 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Al Aaraaf (1829).
“Years of love have been forgot In the hatred of a minute.”
Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) first seen 1829 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: To M——— (1829), reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
“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 (1809–1849) first seen 1829 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Alone", l. 1-8 (written 1829, published 1875).
“And the cloud that took the form (When the rest of Heaven was blue) Of a demon in my view.”
Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) said by 1849 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1809–1849) first seen 1829 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Sonnet. To Science", l. 12-14 (1829).
“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 (1809–1849) first seen 1831 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Mr. B — ", preface to Poems (1831).
“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 (1809–1849) said by 1849 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1809–1849) first seen 1831 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: To Helen", st. 1-2 (1831).
“Yes, Heaven is thine; but this Is a world of sweets and sours; Our flowers are merely—flowers.”
Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) first seen 1831 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Israfel", st. 7 (1831).
“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 (1809–1849) first seen 1831 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Israfel", st. 8 (1831).
“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 (1809–1849) first seen 1831 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Lenore", st. 1 (1831).
“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 (1809–1849) first seen 1833 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Coliseum", st. 2 (1833).
“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 (1809–1849) first seen 1834 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: To One in Paradise", st. 1 (1834).
“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 (1809–1849) said by 1849 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Convinced myself, I seek not to convince.”
Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) first seen 1835 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Berenice" (1835).
“And 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 (1809–1849) said by 1849 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is then no analogy whatever between the operations of the Chess-Player, and those of the calculating machine of Mr. Babbage, 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 (1809–1849) first seen 1836 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Poe stating his arguments that Maelzel's Chess-Player was a hoax. Maelzel's Chess-Player, Southern Literary Journal (April 1836).
“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 (1809–1849) first seen 1839 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Fall of the House of Usher" (1839).
“In the greenest of our valleys By good angels tenanted, Once a fair and stately palace — Radiant palace — reared its head.”
Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) first seen 1839 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Haunted Palace" (1839), st. 1.
“This—all this—was in the olden Time long ago.”
Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) first seen 1839 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Haunted Palace" (1839), st. 2.
“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 (1809–1849) first seen 1839 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Haunted Palace" (1839), st. 5.
“A carpet is the soul of an apartment.”
Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) first seen 1840 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Philosophy of Furniture" in The Gentleman's Magazine (1840:6), p. 267
“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 (1809–1849) first seen 1841 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: A Few Words on Secret Writing" in Graham's Magazine (July 1841).
“They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.”
Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) first seen 1841 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Eleonora" (1841).
“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 (1809–1849) first seen 1841 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Murders in the Rue Morgue" (1841).
“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 (1809–1849) first seen 1841 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Murders in the Rue Morgue" (1841).
“To observe attentively is to remember distinctly.”
Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) first seen 1841 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Murders in the Rue Morgue" (1841).
“And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.”
Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) first seen 1842 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Masque of the Red Death" (1842).
“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 (1809–1849) first seen 1843 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Conqueror Worm" (1843), st. 5.
“Man is an animal that diddles, and there is no animal that diddles but man.”
Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) first seen 1843 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Diddling: Considered As One Of The Exact Sciences"; first published as "Raising the Wind" in Saturday Courier (October 14, 1843).
“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 (1809–1849) first seen 1844 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Premature Burial" (1844).
“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 (1809–1849) first seen 1845 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Dreamland", st. 1 (1845).
“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 (1809–1849) first seen 1845 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Raven and Other Poems (1845), Preface
“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 (1809–1849) first seen 1845 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: To Frances S. Osgood" (1845).
“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 (1809–1849) first seen 1846 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Cask of Amontillado" (1846).
“For the love of God Montresor!”
Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) first seen 1846 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Cask of Amontillado" (1846).
“I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.”
Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) first seen 1848 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to George W. Eveleth (January 4, 1848).
“Can it be fancied that Deity ever vindictively Made in his image a mannikin merely to madden it?”
Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) first seen 1848 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Rationale of Verse", III (1848); this is comparable to: ""What! out of senseless Nothing to provoke / A conscious Something to resent the yoke", FitzGerald, Omar Khayyám.
“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 (1809–1849) first seen 1849 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Frederick W. Thomas" (February 14, 1849).
“Gaily bedight, A gallant knight, In sunshine and in shadow, Had journeyed long, Singing a song, In search of Eldorado.”
Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) first seen 1849 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Eldorado", st. 1 (1849).
“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 (1809–1849) said by 1849 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1809–1849) first seen 1849 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: A Dream Within a Dream" (1849).
“O God! Can I not save One from the pitiless wave? Is all that we see or seem But a dream within a dream?”
Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) first seen 1849 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: A Dream Within A Dream" (1849).
“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 (1809–1849) first seen 1849 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: For Annie", st. 1 (1849).
“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 (1809–1849) first seen 1849 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Bells", st. 1 (1849).
“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 (1809–1849) first seen 1849 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Bells", st. 2 (1849).
“As for myself, I am simply Hop-Frog, the jester — and this is my last jest.”
Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) said by 1849 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Hop-Frog" (1850).