Looking for the best and inspirational Edgar Allan Poe quotes?
Edgar Allan Poe is one of the most influential American short story writers of all time. He is famous for his Gothic style and dark themes. His writing career spanned over a decade, and he influenced many other writers who followed in his footsteps, including Stephen King, H.P. Lovecraft, and Emily Dickinson.
Literary critics and academics have widely studied his works for their psychological insight. They are widely considered part of the horror genre that significantly influences modern culture to this day.
He was born on January 19th, 1809, in Boston, Massachusetts, to mother Elizabeth Arnold Poe and father David Poe Jr. He escaped to London in 1827.
He published his first poem and began working with British periodicals. After spending five years in Britain, Poe moved back to America and published more poems, stories, and critical work.
Poe died at age 40 from complications resulting from alcohol withdrawal just two days after his last poem was published.
Here are some of his inspirational quotes to help you see the brighter side of life:
Top 75 Most Inspiring Edgar Allan Poe Quotes
“There is no beauty without some strangeness.”
“To die laughing must be the most glorious of all glorious deaths!”
“The idea of God, infinity, or spirit stands for the possible attempt at an impossible conception.”
“There is no exquisite beauty… without some strangeness in the proportion.”
“I dread the events of the future, not in themselves but in their results.”
“Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.”
“Invisible things are the only realities.”
“It will be found, in fact, that the ingenious are always fanciful, and the truly imaginative never otherwise than analytic.”
“You call it hope — that fire of fire! It is but agony of desire.”
“With me poetry has not been a purpose, but a passion.”
“There are some secrets which do not permit themselves to be told.”
“The true genius shudders at incompleteness — imperfection — and usually prefers silence to saying the something which is not everything that should be said.”
“All that we see or seem, is but a dream within a dream.”
“All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.”
“Now this is the point. You fancy me a mad. Madmen know nothing. But you should have seen me. You should have seen how wisely I proceeded…”
“Blood was its Avatar and its seal.”
“If we cannot comprehend God in his visible works, how then in his inconceivable thoughts, that call the works into being?”― Edgar Allan Poe
“That which you mistake for madness is but an overacuteness of the senses.”
“Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.”
“I remained too much inside my head and ended up losing my mind.”
“Happiness is not to be found in knowledge, but in the acquisition of knowledge.”
“All that we see and seem is but a dream within a dream.”
“Man’s real life is happy, chiefly because he is ever expecting that it soon will be so.”
“The best things in life make you sweaty.”
“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.”
“Experience has shown, and a true philosophy will always show, that a vast, perhaps the larger, portion of truth arises from the seemingly irrelevant.”
“Mysteries force a man to think, and so injure his health.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“A million candles have burned themselves out. Still I read on.”
“I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.”
“I felt that I breathed an atmosphere of sorrow.”
“Actually, I do have doubts, all the time. Any thinking person does. There are so many sides to every question.”
“To be thoroughly conversant with a man’s heart, is to take our final lesson in the iron-clasped volume of despair.”
“Stupidity is a talent for misconception.”
“Beauty of whatever kind, in its supreme development, invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears.”
“Art is to look at not to criticize.”
“There is an eloquence in true enthusiasm”
“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.”
“Believe nothing you hear, and only one half that you see.”
“The true genius shudders at incompleteness – and usually prefers silence to saying something which is not everything it should be.”
“Whether people grow fat by joking, or whether there is something in fat itself which predisposes to a joke, I have never been quite able to determine…”
“Years of love have been forgotten, in the hatred of a minute.”
“I was never really insane except upon occasions when my heart was touched.”
“Convinced myself, I seek not to convince.”
“Believe only half of what you see and nothing that you hear.”
“Sometimes I’m terrified of my heart; of its constant hunger for whatever it is it wants. The way it stops and starts.”
“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.”
“If you wish to forget anything on the spot, make a note that this thing is to be remembered.”
“Even in the grave, all is not lost.”
“There is an eloquence in true enthusiasm.”
“We gave the Future to the winds, and slumbered tranquilly in the Present, weaving the dull world around us into dreams.”
“Even with the utterly lost, to whom life and death are equally jests, there are matters of which no jest can be made.”
“The generous Critic fann’d the Poet’s fire, And taught the world with reason to admire.”
“Sleep, those little slices of death — how I loathe them.”
“I have no faith in human perfectibility. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active – not more happy – nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago.”
“There is no exquisite beauty…without some strangeness in the proportion.”
“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?”
“Never to suffer would never to have been blessed.”
“A man’s grammar, like Caesar’s wife, should not only be pure, but above suspicion of impurity.”
“Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best have gone to their eternal rest.”
“If it’s meant for you, you won’t have to beg for it. You will never have to sacrifice your dignity for your destiny.”
“The rain came down upon my head – Unshelter’d. And the wind rendered me mad and deaf and blind.”
“It is a happiness to wonder; — it is a happiness to dream.”
“Yet mad I am not…and very surely do I not dream.”
“Science has not yet taught us if madness is or is not the sublimity of the intelligence.”
“It is a happiness to wonder; it is a happiness to dream.”
“Experience has shown, and a true philosophy will always show, that a vast, perhaps the larger portion of the truth arises from the seemingly irrelevant.”
“There are chords in the hearts of the most reckless which cannot be touched without emotion.”
“The scariest monsters are the ones that lurk within our souls.”
“Every moment of the night Forever changing places And they put out the star-light With the breath from their pale faces”
“I have great faith in fools – self-confidence my friends will call it.”
“Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality.”
