“A strong argument for the religion of Christ is this – that offences against Charity are about the only ones which men on their death-beds can be made – not to understand – but to feel – as crime.”
Marginalia

“And all I loved, I loved alone.”
Alone

“And so being young and dipped in folly, I fell in love with melancholy.”
Romance

“Beauty of whatever kind, in its supreme development, invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears.”
The Philosophy of Composition

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

“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.”
The Mystery of Marie Roget

“I am above the weakness of seeking to establish a sequence of cause and effect, between the disaster and the atrocity.”
The Black Cat

“I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.”
Letter E.A. Poe to George W. Eveleth 

“I felt that I breathed an atmosphere of sorrow.”
The Fall of the House of Usher

“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 perilled life and reputation and reason. It has been in the desperate attempt to escape from torturing memories — memories of wrong and injustice and imputed dishonor — from a sense of insupportable loneliness and a dread of some strange impending doom.”
Letter E.A. Poe to Sarah H. Whitman

“I have, indeed, no abhorrence of danger, except in its absolute effect – in terror.”
The Fall of the House of Usher

“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.”
Letter E.A. Poe to James Russell Lowell

“I need scarcely observe that a poem deserves its title only inasmuch as it excites, by elevating the soul. The value of the poem is in the ratio of this elevating excitement.”
The Poetic Principle

“I was never really insane except upon occasions when my heart was touched.”
Letter E.A. Poe to Maria Clemm

“I would define, in brief, the poetry of words as The Rhythmical Creation of Beauty.”
The Poetic Principle

“If you wish to forget anything on the spot, make a note that this thing is to be remembered.”
Marginalia

“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 excessively discussed.”
The Rationale of Verse

“Invisible things are the only realities.”
Loss of Breath

“Is all that we see or seem but a dream within a dream?”
A Dream Within a Dream

“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.”
Marginalia

“It is the nature of truth in general, as of some ores in particular, to be richest when most superficial.”
The Rationale of Verse

“It will be found, in fact, that the ingenious are always fanciful, and the truly imaginative never otherwise than analytic.”
The Murders in the Rue Morgue

“Lord, help my poor soul.”
Final words of E.A. Poe

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

“Never to suffer would have been never to have been blessed.”
Mesmeric Revelation

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

“Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary.”
The Raven

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

“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 Poetic Principle

“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?”
The Premature Burial

“The death of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world.”
The Philosophy of Composition

“The nose of a mob is its imagination. By this, at any time, it can be quietly led.”
Marginalia

“The rudiment of verse may, possibly, be found in the spondee.”
The Rationale of Verse

“The true genius shudders at incompleteness — imperfection — and usually prefers silence to saying the something which is not every thing that should be said.”
Marginalia

“There are chords in the hearts of the most reckless which cannot be touched without emotion.”
The Masque of the Red Death

“There is no exquisite beauty without some strangeness in the proportion.”
Ligeia

“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.”
The Black Cat

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

“To vilify a great man is the readiest way in which a little man can himself attain greatness.”
Marginalia

“We loved with a love that was more than love.”
Annabel Lee

“Were I called upon to define, very briefly, the term ‘Art’, I should call it ‘the reproduction of what the Senses perceive in Nature through the veil of the soul.’ The mere imitation, however accurate, of what is in Nature, entitles no man to the sacred name of ‘Artist.’”
Marginalia

“With me poetry has not been a purpose, but a passion.”
The Raven and Other Poems (Preface)

“Words have no power to impress the mind with the exquisite horror of their reality.”
The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym

“Years of love have been forgot, In the hatred of a minute.”
To-