Edgar Allan Poe was an American writer, poet, author, editor, and literary critic who is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and the macabre. He is widely regarded as a central figure of Romanticism and Gothic fiction in the United States, and of American literature.
Edgar Allan Poe Quotes
1. “All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
2. “I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
3. “And all I loved, I loved alone.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
4. “Believe only half of what you see and nothing that you hear.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
5. “I am a writer. Therefore. I am not sane.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
6. “There is no beauty without some strangeness.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
7. “Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
8. “We loved with a love that was more than love.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
9. “Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
10. “Science has not yet taught us if madness is or is not the sublimity of the intelligence.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
11. “I was never really insane except upon occasions when my heart was touched.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
12. “Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
13. “Leave my loneliness unbroken.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
14. “I do not suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
15. “To elevate the soul, poetry is necessary.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
16. “And so being young and dipped in folly I fell in love with melancholy.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
17. “Poetry is the rhythmical creation of beauty in words.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
18. “Never to suffer would never to have been blessed.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
19. “A short story must have a single mood and every sentence must build towards it.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
20. “The scariest monsters are the ones that lurk within our souls.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
21. “Beauty of whatever kind, in its supreme development, invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
22. “Stupidity is a talent for misconception.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
23. “Years of love have been forgot, In the hatred of a minute.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
24. “If a poem hasn’t ripped apart your soul; you haven’t experienced poetry.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
25. “A wise man hears one word and understands two.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
26. “Those who gossip with you will gossip about you.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
27. “The death of a beautiful woman, is unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
28. “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?”
— Edgar Allan Poe
29. “Deep in earth my love is lying And I must weep alone.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
30. “There are chords in the hearts of the most reckless which cannot be touched without emotion.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
31. “Every poem should remind the reader that they are going to die.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
32. “All suffering originates from craving, from attachment, from desire.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
33. “The true genius shudders at incompleteness – and usually prefers silence to saying something which is not everything it should be.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
34. “The eye, like a shattered mirror, multiplies the images of sorrow.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
35. “The believer is happy. The doubter is wise.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
36. “The best things in life make you sweaty.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
37. “To observe attentively is to remember distinctly.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
38. “I have great faith in fools; self-confidence my friends call it.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
39. “Sometimes I’m terrified of my heart; of its constant hunger for whatever it is it wants. The way it stops and starts.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
40. “Lord help my poor soul.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
41. “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.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
42. “There are some secrets which do not permit themselves to be told.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
43. “I was a child and she was a child, In this kingdom by the sea; But we loved with a love that was more than love- I and my Annabel Lee; With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven Coveted her and me.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
44. “It is a happiness to wonder; – it is a happiness to dream.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
45. “The goodness of the true pun is in the direct ratio of its intolerability.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
46. “I have no faith in human perfectability. 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.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
47. “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.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
48. “That man is not truly brave who is afraid either to seem or to be, when it suits him, a coward.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
49. “False hope is nicer than no hope at all.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
50. “Sleep, those little slices of death – how I loathe them.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
51. “A lie travels round the world while truth is putting her boots on.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
52. “I intend to put up with nothing that I can put down.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
53. “You call it hope-that fire of fire! It is but agony of desire.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
54. “The world is a great ocean, upon which we encounter more tempestuous storms than calms.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
55. “If you wish to forget anything on the spot, make a note that this thing is to be remembered.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
56. “How many good books suffer neglect through the inefficiency of their beginnings!”
— Edgar Allan Poe
57. “That which you mistake for madness is but an overacuteness of the senses.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
58. “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.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
59. “All religion, my friend, is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination, and poetry.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
60. “But our love was stronger by far than the love Of those who were older than we Of many far wiser than we And neither the angels in heaven above, Nor the demons down under the sea, Can ever dissever my soul from the soul Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
61. “And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor, Shall be lifted – Nevermore!”
— Edgar Allan Poe
62. “The past is a pebble in my shoe.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
63. “With me poetry has not been a purpose, but a passion.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
64. “Of puns it has been said that those who most dislike them are those who are least able to utter them.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
65. “Believe nothing you hear, and only one half that you see.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
66. “If you run out of ideas follow the road; you’ll get there.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
67. “I felt that I breathed an atmosphere of sorrow.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
68. “Men of genius are far more abundant than is supposed. In fact, to appreciate thoroughly the work of what we call genius, is to possess all the genius by which the work was produced.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
69. “Were I called on 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.’”
— Edgar Allan Poe
70. “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.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
71. “To die laughing must be the most glorious of all glorious deaths!”
— Edgar Allan Poe
72. “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.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
73. “It was night, and the rain fell; and falling, it was rain, but, having fallen, it was blood.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
74. “In reading some books we occupy ourselves chiefly with the thoughts of the author; in perusing others, exclusively with our own.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
75. “Even in the grave, all is not lost.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
76. “Indeed, there is an eloquence in true enthusiasm that is not to be doubted.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
77. “A man’s grammar, like Caesar’s wife, should not only be pure, but above suspicion of impurity.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
78. “If a man deceives me once, shame on him; if he deceives me twice, shame on me.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
79. “Beauty is the sole legitimate province of the poem.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
80. “The idea of God, infinity, or spirit stands for the possible attempt at an impossible conception.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
81. “Keeping time, time, time, In a sort of Runic rhyme, To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells, From the bells, bells, bells.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
82. “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.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
83. “The plots of God are perfect. The Universe is a plot of God.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
84. “And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting…”
— Edgar Allan Poe
85. “Perversity is the human thirst for self-torture.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
86. “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!”
— Edgar Allan Poe
87. “Art is to look at not to criticize.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
88. “Convinced myself, I seek not to convince.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
89. “It is the nature of truth in general, as of some ores in particular, to be richest when most superficial.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
90. “I heed not that my earthly lot Hath – little of Earth in it – That years of love have been forgot In the hatred of a minute: – I mourn not that the desolate Are happier, sweet, than I, But that you sorrow for my fate Who am a passer by.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
91. “The rain came down upon my head – Unshelter’d. And the wind rendered me mad and deaf and blind.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
92. “And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
93. “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.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
94. “I have made no money. I am as poor now as ever I was in my life – except in hope, which is by no means bankable.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
95. “The fever called “living” Is conquer’d at last.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
96. “I found him well educated, with unusual powers of mind, but infected with misanthropy, and subject to perverse moods of alternate enthusiasm and melancholy.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
97. “I stand amid the roar Of a surf-tormented shore, And I hold within my hand Grains of golden sand- How few! yet how they creep Through my fingers to the deep, While I weep- while I weep!”
— Edgar Allan Poe
98. “Man’s real life is happy, chiefly because he is ever expecting that it soon will be so.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
99. “Sensations are the great things, after all. Should you ever be drowned or hung, be sure and make a note of your sensations; they will be worth to you ten guineas a sheet.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
100. “Invisible things are the only realities.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
101. “The object, Truth, or the satisfaction of the intellect, and the object, Passion, or the excitement of the heart, are, although attainable, to a certain extent, in poetry, far more readily attainable in prose.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
102. “I remained to much inside my head and ended up losing my mind.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
103. “Grammar is the analysis of language.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
104. “And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
105. “True, nervous, very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am, but why will say that I am mad?! The disease had haunted my senses, not destroyed, not dulled them. Of all the sense of hearing acute.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
106. “Blood was its Avatar and its seal.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
107. “Even for those to whom life and death are equal jests. There are some things that are still held in respect.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
108. “It may be roundly asserted that human ingenuity cannot concoct a cipher which human ingenuity cannot resolve.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
109. “Sound loves to revel in a summer night.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
110. “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.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
111. “Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best have gone to their eternal rest.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
112. “Most writers – poets in especial – prefer having it understood that they compose by a species of fine frenzy – an ecstatic intuition – and would positively shudder at letting the public take a peep behind the scenes…”
— Edgar Allan Poe
113. “Mournful and Never-ending Remembrance.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
114. “There are moments when, even to the sober eye of Reason, the world of our sad humanity must assume the aspect of Hell.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
115. “I wish I could write as mysterious as a cat.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
116. “That the play is the tragedy, “Man,” And its hero, the Conqueror Worm.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
117. “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.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
118. “The pioneers and missionaries of religion have been the real cause of more trouble and war than all other classes of mankind.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
119. “The unity of effect or impression is a point of the greatest importance. It is clear, moreover, that this unity cannot be thoroughly preserved in productions whose perusal cannot be completed at one sitting.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
120. “Happiness is not to be found in knowledge, but in the acquisition of knowledge.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
121. “Leave my loneliness unbroken! – quit the bust above my door! Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!” Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
122. “Marking a book is literally an experience of your differences or agreements with the author. It is the highest respect you can pay him.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
123. “And the life of the ebony clock went out with that of the last of the gay. And the flames of the tripods expired. And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
124. “I am walking like a bewitched corpse, with the certainty of being eaten by the infinite, of being annulled by the only existing Absurd.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
125. “He knew that Hop-Frog was not fond of wine; for it excited the poor cripple almost to madness; and madness is no comfortable feeling.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
126. “I dread the events of the future, not in themselves but in their results.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
127. “I was never kinder to the old man than during the whole week before I killed him.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
128. “Decorum – that bug-bear which deters so many from bliss until the opportunity for bliss has forever gone by.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
129. “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.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
130. “Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe, and forget this lost Lenore!”
— Edgar Allan Poe
131. “If any ambitious man have a fancy to revolutionize, at one effort, the universal world of human thought, human opinion, and human sentiment…”
— Edgar Allan Poe
132. “The true genius shudders at incompleteness.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
133. “Life is for the strong, to be lived by the strong and if need be, taken by the strong. The weak were put on earth to give the strong pleasure.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
134. “To those who have cherished an affection for a faithful and sagacious dog, I need hardly be at the trouble of explaining the nature or the intensity of the gratification thus derivable. 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.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
135. “Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore…”
— Edgar Allan Poe
136. “In me didst thou exist-and, in my death, see by this image, which is thine own, how utterly thou hast murdered thyself.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
137. “It is with literature as with law or empire – an established name is an estate in tenure, or a throne in possession.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
138. “I am above the weakness of seeking to establish a sequence of cause and effect, between the disaster and the atrocity.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
139. “Children are never too tender to be whipped. Like tough beefsteaks, the more you beat them, the more tender they become.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
140. “I could not love except where Death Was mingling his with Beauty’s breath.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
141. “You will observe that the stories told are all about money-seekers, not about money-finders.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
142. “The nose of a mob is its imagination. By this, at any time, it can be quietly led.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
143. “No one should brave the underworld alone.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
144. “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.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
145. “Who cares how time advances? I am drinking ale today.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
146. “Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!” Quoth the raven, “Nevermore.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
147. “Always keep a big bottle of booze at your side. If a bird starts talking nonsense to you in the middle of the night pour yourself a stiff drink.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
148. “If in many of my productions terror has been the thesis, I maintain that terror is not of Germany, but of the soul.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
149. “If you have never been at sea in a heavy gale, you can form no idea of the confusion of mind occasioned by wind and spry together. They blind, deafen, and strangle you, and take away all power of action or reflection.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
150. “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.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
151. “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.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
152. “It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain, but, once conceived, it haunted me day and night.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
153. “It will be found, in fact, that the ingenious are always fanciful, and the truly imaginative never otherwise than analytic.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
154. “When a madman appears thoroughly sane, indeed, it is high time to put him in a straight jacket.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
155. “To vilify a great man is the readiest way in which a little man can himself attain greatness.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
156. “And I fell violently on my face.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
157. “Finally on Sunday morning, October 7, 1849, “He became quiet and seemed to rest for a short time. Then, gently, moving his head,” he said, “Lord help my poor soul.” As he had lived so he died-in great misery and tragedy.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
158. “Have we not a perpetual inclination, in the teeth of our best judgment, to violate that which is Law, merely because we understand it to be such?”
— Edgar Allan Poe
159. “I do believe God gave me a spark of genius, but he quenched it in misery.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
160. “Man is an animal that diddles, and there is no animal that diddles but man.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
161. “The customs of the world are so many conventional follies.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
162. “There are certain themes of which the interest is all-absorbing, but which are too entirely horrible for the purposes of legitimate fiction.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
163. “From a proud tower in the town, Death looks gigantically down.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
164. “The generous Critic fann’d the Poet’s fire, And taught the world with reason to admire.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
165. “Books, indeed, were his sole luxuries.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
166. “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.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
167. “He is, as you say, a remarkable horse, a prodigious horse, although as you very justly observe, a suspicious and untractable character.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
168. “As a poet and as a mathematician, he would reason well; as a mere mathematician, he could not have reasoned at all.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
169. “I would define, in brief, the poetry of words as the rhythmical creation of beauty.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
170. “Once upon a midnight dreary.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
171. “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.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
172. “There are surely other worlds than this – other thoughts than the thoughts of the multitude – other speculations than the speculations of the sophist. Who then shall call thy conduct into question? who blame thee for thy visionary hours, or denounce those occupations as a wasting away of life, which were but the overflowings of thine everlasting energies?”
— Edgar Allan Poe
173. “The usual derivation of the word Metaphysics is not to be sustainedthe science is supposed to take its name from its superiority to physics. The truth is, that Aristotle’s treatise on Morals is next in succession to his Book of Physics.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
174. “But tomorrow I die, and today I would unburden my soul.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
175. “We gave him a hearty welcome, for there was nearly half as much of the entertaining as of the contemptible about the man…”
— Edgar Allan Poe
176. “Who entereth herein, a conqueror hath bin; Who slayeth the dragon, the shield he shall win.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
177. “Villains!” I shrieked, “dissemble no more! I admit the deed! – tear up the planks! – here, here! – it is the beating of his hideous heart!”
— Edgar Allan Poe
178. “Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night’s Plutonian shore!” Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
179. “Here I opened wide the door; – Darkness there, and nothing more.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
180. “Many years ago, I contracted an intimacy with a Mr. William Legrand. He was of an ancient Huguenot family, and had once been wealthy; but a series of misfortunes had reduced him to want.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
181. “It all depends on the robber’s knowledge of the loser’s knowledge of the robber. – Daupin.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
182. “I hold that a long poem does not exist. I maintain that the phrase, “a long poem,” is simply a flat contradiction in terms.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
183. “There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart – an unredeemed dreariness of thought which no goading of the imagination could torture into aught of the sublime.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
184. “Democracy is a very admirable form of government – for dogs.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
185. “In criticism I will be bold, and as sternly, absolutely just with friend and foe. From this purpose nothing shall turn me.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
186. “The analytical power should not be confounded with simple ingenuity; for while the analyst is necessarily ingenious, the ingenious man is often remarkably incapable of analysis.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
187. “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…”
— Edgar Allan Poe
188. “Scorching my seared heart with a pain, not hell shall make me fear again.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
189. “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.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
190. “There is no passion in nature so demoniacally impatient, as that of him who, shuddering upon the edge of a precipice, thus meditates a Plunge.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
191. “Ah, bear in mind this garden was enchanted!”
— Edgar Allan Poe
192. “The writer who neglects punctuation, or mispunctuates, is liable to be misunderstood for the want of merely a comma, it often occurs that an axiom appears a paradox, or that a sarcasm is converted into a sermonoid.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
193. “Immensely tall trunks of trees, gray and leafless, rose up in endless succession as far as the eye could reach. Their roots were concealed in wide-spreading morasses, whose dreary water lay intensely black, still, and altogether terrible, beneath. And the strange trees seemed endowed with a human vitality, and waving to and fro their skeleton arms, were crying to the silent waters for mercy, in the shrill and piercing accents of the most acute agony and despair.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
194. “At midnight, in the month of June, I stand beneath the mystic moon.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
195. “I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell. How, then, am I mad? Hearken! and observe how healthily – how calmly I can tell you the whole story.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
196. “Tell me truly, I implore – Is there – is there balm in Gilead? – tell me – tell me, I implore!”
— Edgar Allan Poe
197. “I fashion the expression of my face, as accurately as possible, in accordance with the expression of his, and then wait to see what thoughts or sentiments arise in my mind or heart, as if to match or correspond with the expression.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
198. “Dark draperies hung upon the walls. The general furniture was profuse, comfortless, antique, and tattered. Many books and musical instruments lay scattered about, but failed to give any vitality to the scene. I felt that I breathed an atmosphere of sorrow. An air of stern, deep, and irredeemable gloom hung over and pervaded all.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
199. “We allude to the short prose narrative, requiring from a half hour to one or two hours in its perusal.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
200. “Boston: Their hotels are bad. Their pumpkin pies are delicious. Their poetry is not so good.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
