Thanks to his intriguing creative writings, Edgar Allen Poe is counted among major authors of literary works in the world. He has many highly imaginative poems and short stories to his credit and they have gone on to influence generations even to this day. Edgar is considered by a lot of people to be the one who made modern short stories popular and being an author and editor, his works have greatly influenced the field of literature even at the international level. For a better understanding of this great man whose pieces of literary works influenced literature all over the world, here are 100 Inspirational Edgar Allen Poe quotes.
100 Inspirational Edgar Allen Poe Quotes About Life and Success
1. I would define, in brief, the poetry of words as the rhythmical creation of beauty.
2. Believe nothing you hear, and only one half that you see.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. There are few persons, even among the calmest thinkers, who have not occasionally been startled into a vague, yet thrilling half-credence in the supernatural, by coincidences of so seemingly marvelous a character that, as mere coincidences, the intellect has been unable to receive them.
6. And rays of truth you cannot see are flashing thro’ eternity
7. [A] fitful strain of melancholy which will ever be found inseparable from the perfection of the beautiful.
8. Yet we met, and fate bound us together at the altar, and I never spoke of passion nor thought of love. She, however, shunned society, and, attaching herself to me alone rendered me happy. It is a happiness to wonder; it is a happiness to dream.
9. When I was young and filled with folly, I fell in love with melancholy.
10. We gave the Future to the winds, and slumbered tranquility in the Present, weaving the dull world around us into dreams.
11. I was never really insane except upon occasions when my heart was touched.
12. Never to suffer would never to have been blessed.
13. Art is to look at not to criticize.
14. Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.
15. Marking a book is literally an experience of your differences or agreements with the author. It is the highest respect you can pay him.
16. The depth lies in the valleys where we seek her, and not upon the mountain-tops where she is found.
17. Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore.
18. To be thoroughly conversant with Man’s heart is to take our final lesson in the iron-clasped volume of Despair.
19. Yes I now feel that it was then on that evening of sweet dreams- that the very first dawn of human love burst upon the icy night of my spirit. Since that period I have never seen nor heard your name without a shiver half of delight half of anxiety.
20. For eyes we have no models in the remotely antique.
21. Beauty of whatever kind, in its supreme development, invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears.
22. 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.
23. Mysteries force a man to think.
24. With me poetry has not been a purpose, but a passion.
25. It will be found, in fact, that the ingenious are always fanciful, and the truly imaginative never otherwise than analytic.
26. Who has not, a hundred times, found himself committing a vile or a silly action for no other reason than because he knows he should not?
27. To him, who still would gaze upon the glory of the summer sun, there comes, when that sun will from him part, a sullen hopelessness of heart.
28. Actually, I do have doubts, all the time. Any thinking person does. There are so many sides to every question.
29. For passion must, with youth, expire.
30. Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.
31. To elevate the soul, poetry is necessary.
32. The true genius shudders at incompleteness — imperfection — and usually prefers silence to saying the something which is not everything that should be said.
33. In other words, I believed, and still do believe, that truth, is frequently of its own essence, superficial, and that, in many cases, the depth lies more in the abysses where we seek her, than in the actual situations wherein she may be found.
34. A million candles have burned themselves out. Still I read on.
35. That single thought is enough. The impulse increases to a wish, the wish to a desire, the desire to an uncontrollable longing, and the longing is indulged.
36. 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.
37. We gave him a hearty welcome, for there was nearly half as much of the entertaining as of the contemptible about the man.
38. And so, all the night-tide, I lay down the side, of my darling, my darling, my life, and my bride, in the sepulcher there by the sea, in her tomb by the surrounding sea.
39. To observe attentively is to remember distinctly.
40. I went as a passenger, having no other inducement than a kind of nervous restlessness which haunted me as a friend.
41. There is an eloquence in true enthusiasm
42. If you wish to forget anything on the spot, make a note that this thing is to be remembered.
43. I am above the weakness of seeking to establish a sequence of cause and effect, between the disaster and the atrocity.
44. In our endeavors to recall to memory something long forgotten, we often find ourselves upon the very verge of remembrance, without being able, in the end, to remember.
45. No pictorial or sculptural combinations of points of human loveliness, do more than approach the living and breathing human beauty as it gladdens our daily path.
46. It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain; but once conceived, it haunted me day and night.
47. In criticism, I will be bold, and as sternly, absolutely just with friend and foe. From this purpose, nothing shall turn me.
48. The rain came down upon my head – Unshelter’d. And the wind rendered me mad and deaf and blind.
49. To conceive the horror of my sensations is, I presume, utterly impossible; yet a curiosity to penetrate the mysteries of these awful regions predominates even over my despair, and will reconcile me to the most hideous aspect of death.
50. Man’s real life is happy, chiefly because he is ever expecting that it soon will be so.
51. The best things in life make you sweaty.
52. Convinced myself, I seek not to convince.
53. There is no exquisite beauty… without some strangeness in the proportion.
54. Imperceptibly the love of these discords grew upon me as my love of music grew stronger.
55. Ah, not in knowledge is happiness, but in the acquisition of knowledge! In forever knowing, we are forever blessed; but to know all, were the curse of a friend.
56. That man is not truly brave who is afraid either to seem or to be, when it suits him, a coward.
57. And so being young and dipped in folly I fell in love with melancholy.
58. There seemed a deep sense of life and joy about all; and although no airs blew from out the Heavens, yet everything had motion through the gentle sweepings to and fro of innumerable butterflies, that might have been mistaken for tulips with wings.
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59. The most expuisite beauty has strangeness in its proportions.
60. There are few persons who have not, at some period of their lives, amused themselves in retracing the steps by which particular conclusions of their own minds have been attained.
61. It is a happiness to wonder – it is a happiness to dream.
62. We loved with a love that was more than love.
63. From childhood’s hour, I have not been. As others were, I have not seen. As others saw, I could not awaken. My heart to joy at the same tone. And all I loved, I loved alone.
64. Books, indeed, were his sole luxuries.
65. I smiled,—for what had I to fear?
66. I was cautious in what I said before the young lady; for I could not be sure that she was sane; and, in fact, there was a certain restless brilliancy about her eyes that half led me to imagine she was not.
67. 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.
68. I have not only labored solely for the benefit of others but have been forced to model my thoughts at the will of men whose imbecility was evident to all but themselves.
69. A mystery, and a dream should my early life seem.
70. And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
71. All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.
72. I have no faith in human perfectibility. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect on humanity. Man is now only more active – not more happy – nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago.
73. To vilify a great man is the readiest way in which a little man can himself attain greatness.
74. As a poet and as a mathematician, he would reason well; as a mere mathematician, he could not have reasoned at all.
75. So resolute is the world to despise anything which carries with it an air of simplicity.
76. All suffering originates from craving, from attachment, from desire.
77. If a poem hasn’t ripped apart your soul; you haven’t experienced poetry.
78. His heart is a suspended lute; As soon as you touch it, it resonates.
79. “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.
80. I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.
81. Experience has shown, and a true philosophy will always show, that a vast, perhaps the larger, portion of truth arises from the seemingly irrelevant.
82. Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore —While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
83. 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.
84. Philosophers have often held dispute
As to the seat of thought in man and brute
For that, the power of thought attends the latter
My friend, thy beau, hath made a settled matter,
And in spite of dogmas current in all ages,
One settled fact is better than ten sages.
85. It is the object of our newspapers rather to create a sensation – to make a point – than to further the cause of truth.
86. You will observe that the stories told are all about money-seekers, not about money-finders.
87. When, indeed, men speak of Beauty, they mean, precisely, not a quality, as is supposed, but an effect – they refer, in short, just to that intense and pure elevation of soul – not of intellect, or of heart.
88. Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality.
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89. Stupidity is a talent for misconception.
90. Years of love have been forgotten in the hatred of a minute.
91. A short story must have a single mood and every sentence must build towards it.
92. I have great faith in fools – self-confidence my friends will call it.
93. The agony of my soul found vent in one loud, long and final scream of despair.
94. For my own part, I have never had a thought which I could not set down in words, with even more distinctness than that with which I conceived it.
95. A judge at common law may be an ordinary man; a good judge of a carpet must be a genius.
96. The Prefect, who had a fashion of calling everything “odd” that was beyond his comprehension, and thus lived amid an absolute legion of “oddities.”
97. 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?
98. For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams.
99. It was well said of a certain German book that it does not permit itself to be read.
100. I wish I could write as mysterious as a cat.