Edgar Allan Poe Quotes (173 Quotes)

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.

Lo 'tis a gala night Within the lonesome latter years An angel throng, bewinged, bedight In veils, and drowned in tears, Sit in a theatre, to see A play of hopes and fears, While the orchestra breathes fitfully The music of the spheres. Mimes, in the fo.

Of puns it has been said that those who most dislike them are those who are least able to utter them.

As if the towers had thrust aside,
In slightly sinking, the dull tide-
As if their tops had feebly given
A void within the filmy Heaven.

Eagerly I wished the morrow; - vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow - sorrow for the lost Lenore -
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore -
Nameless here for evermore.

As an individual, I myself feel impelled to fancy a limitless succession of Universes. Each exists, apart and independently, in the bosom of its proper and particular God.

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.

And, pride, what have I now with thee?

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

How often we forget all time, when lone
Admiring Nature's universal throne;
Her woods - her winds - her mountains - the intense
Reply of Hers to Our intelligence!

Of late, eternal condor years
So shake the very Heaven on high
With tumult as they thunder by,
I have no time for idle cares
Through gazing on the unquiet sky;
And when an hour with calmer wings
Its down upon my spirit flings,
That little time with lyre and rhyme
To while away-forbidden things-
My heart would feel to be a crime
Unless it trembled with the strings.

The plots of God are perfect. The Universe is a plot of God.

The higher powers of the reflective intellect are more decidedly and more usefully tasked by the unostentatious game of draughts than by all the elaborate frivolity of chess.

In criticism I will be bold, and as sternly, absolutely just with friend and foe. From this purpose nothing shall turn me.

Now, when storms of Fate o'ercast
Darkly my Present and my Past,
Let my Future radiant shine
With sweet hopes of thee and thine!

And dimmer nothings which were real-
(Shadows- and a more shadowy light!

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

I have great faith in fools My friends call it self-confidence.

How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,
In the icy air of night!

I never can hear a crowd of people singing and gesticulating, all together, at an Italian opera, without fancying myself at Athens, listening to that particular tragedy, by Sophocles, in which he introduces a full chorus of turkeys, who set about bewailing the death of Meleager.

All Nature speaks, and ev'n ideal things
Flap shadowy sounds from visionary wings-
But ah!

'Twas sunset: when the sun will part
There comes a sullenness of heart
To him who still would look upon
The glory of the summer sun.

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.