Edgar Allan Poe Quotes

Believe only half of what you see and nothing that you hear.

The scariest monsters are the ones that lurk within our souls.

I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.

There is no beauty without some strangeness

I have absolutely no pleasure in the stimulants in which I sometimes so madly indulge. It has not been in the pursuit of pleasure that I have periled life and reputation and reason. It has been the desperate attempt to escape from torturing memories, from a sense of insupportable loneliness and a dread of some strange impending doom.

All suffering originates from craving, from attachment, from desire.

The believer is happy. The doubter is wise.

Men have called me mad; but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence– whether much that is glorious– whether all that is profound– does not spring from disease of thought– from moods of mind exalted at the expense of the general intellect.

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

Years of love have been forgot, In the hatred of a minute.

And so, being young and dipt in folly, I fell in love with melancholy.

I remained too much inside my head and ended up losing my mind.

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

Always keep a big bottle of booze at your side. If a bird starts talking nonsense to you in the middle of the night pour yourself a stiff drink.

A change fell upon all things. Strange brilliant flowers, star-shaped, burst out upon the trees where no flowers had been before. The tints of the green carpet deepened; and when, one by one, the white daisies shrank away, there sprang up, in place of them, ten by ten of the ruby-red asphodel. And life arose in our paths; for the tall flamingo hitherto unseen, with all gay glowing birds, flaunted his scarlet plumage before us. The golden and silver fish haunted the river.

Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality.

I was never really insane except upon occasions when my heart was touched.

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.

A lie travels round the world while truth is putting her boots on.

That pleasure which is at once the most pure, the most elevating and the most intense, is derived, I maintain, from the contemplation of the beautiful.

The world is a great ocean, upon which we encounter more tempestuous storms than calms.

Leave my loneliness unbroken

And all my days are trances, And all my nightly dreams Are where thy dark eye glances, And where thy footstep gleams-- In what ethereal dances, By what eternal streams!

The best things in life make you sweaty.

If a poem hasn't ripped apart your soul; you haven't experienced poetry.

A short story must have a single mood and every sentence must build towards it.

There are some secrets which do not permit themselves to be told.

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 those more important undertakings where mind struggles with mind.

If a man deceives me once, shame on him; if he deceives me twice, shame on me.

We loved with a love that was more than love.

Beauty of whatever kind, in its supreme development, invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears.

The eye, like a shattered mirror, multiplies the images of sorrow

I found him well educated, with unusual powers of mind, but infected with misanthropy, and subject to perverse moods of alternate enthusiasm and melancholy.

Every poem should remind the reader that they are going to die.

It was night, and the rain fell; and falling, it was rain, but, having fallen, it was blood.

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

All religion, my friend, is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination, and poetry.

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

The ninety and nine are with dreams, content but the hope of the world made new, is the hundredth man who is grimly bent on making those dreams come true.

Those who gossip with you will gossip about you.

If you run out of ideas follow the road; you'll get there

I fell in love with melancholy

And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor, Shall be lifted -- Nevermore!

Invisible things are the only realities.

Men have called me mad; but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence.

It is a happiness to wonder; -- it is a happiness to dream.

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

Truth is not always in a well. In fact, as regards the more important knowledge, I do believe that she is invariably superficial. The depth lies in the valleys where we seek her, and not upon the mountain-tops where she is found.

Reality is the #1 cause of insanity among those who are in contact with it

Never to suffer would have been never to have been blessed.