Quotes from Edgar Allan Poe

Sleep, those little slices of death, how I loathe them.

Sleep, those little slices of death; Oh how I loathe them.

Take this kiss upon the brow and, in parting from you now, thus much let me avow -- 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.

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

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.

There are few cases in which mere popularity should be considered a proper test of merit; but the case of song-writing is, I think, one of the few.

They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night. In their gray visions they obtain glimpses of eternity; and thrill; in waking; to find they have been upon the verge of the great secret.

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.

One half of the pleasure experienced at a theatre arises from the spectator's sympathy with the rest of the audience, and, especially from his belief in their sympathy with him.

In visions of the dark night I have dreamed of joy departed-- But a waking dream of life and light Hath left me broken-hearted.

...for her whom in life thou dids't abhor, in death thou shalt adore

Who cares how time advances? I am drinking ale today.

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.

The fever called "living" Is conquer'd at last.

There are some qualities, some incorporate things, that have a double life, which thus is made. A type os twin entity which springs from matter and light, envinced in solid and shade.

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

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

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

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

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!

We had always dwelled together, beneath a tropical sun, in the Valley of the Many Colored Grass.

And all I loved, I loved alone.

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.

In one case out of a hundred a point is excessively discussed because it is obscure; in the ninety-nine remaining it is obscure because it is excessively discussed.