Last Updated October 9th, 2017
Edgar Allan Poe is my all-time favorite writer.
He is best known for his poetry and short stories of horror and mystery, including “The Raven“, “The Fall of the House of Usher,” and “The Cask of Amontillado“.
In 1827, Poe published his first book titled, “Tamerlane and Other Poems“. His second book “Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems” was published in 1829.
In 1841, Poe wrote detective fiction, “The Murders in the Rue Morgue“.
His poem “The Raven” was hailed as a literary sensation.
It is still considered one of the best of Poe’s writing career.
I have painstakingly selected out some of his many meaningful, thought-provoking quotes that you can use in your daily conversations or work.
Or share them with your Facebook friends or Twitter followers.
Not just any written work from his books. That’s the reason, why I do not include any line from his popular poem “The Raven“.
Beware: There are many quotes wrongly attributed to Edgar Allan Poe found in websites and also those published books.
There are even fake Poe quotes around.
The next time before you use or share any quote, make sure you get it from a reliable source with verifications.
Verified Edgar Allan Poe Quotes
All the Edgar Allan Poe quotes below are verified authentic and they are all linked to all his works.
“Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality.”
(The Narrative Of Arthur Gordon Pym Of Nantucket,Harper & Brothers, 1838, ch. XII; p.109)
(You can also find this quote here.)
“There is no exquisite beauty… without some strangeness in the proportion.”
Note: Poe paraphrased the above quote slightly from the essay “Of Beauty” by Francis Bacon, Lord Verulam, Viscount St. Albans. “There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.”
(You can also find this quote in: Great Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe by Edgar Allan Poe, Simon and Schuster, 2007, Notes, 5; p.347)
“All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.”
(You can also find this quote in: The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, Volume 2 by Edgar Allan Poe, Widdleton, 1871, A Dream Within A Dream; p.40)
“Sound loves to revel in a summer night.”
(You can also find this quote in: The Works of the Late Edgar Allan Poe: With Notices of His Life And Genius bY N. P. Willis, J. R. Lowell, And R. W. Griswold, In Two Volumes, Vol. II, Poems And Miscellanies, New York: J. S. Redfield, Clinton Hall, 1850, AL AARAAF; p.78 )
“That years of love have been forgot in the hatred of a minute.”
(You can also find this quote in: The Works of the Late Edgar Allan Poe: With Notices of His Life And Genius bY N. P. Willis, J. R. Lowell, And R. W. Griswold, In Two Volumes, Vol. II, Poems And Miscellanies, New York: J. S. Redfield, Clinton Hall, 1850, TO—; p.51 )
“Believe nothing you hear, and only one half that you see.”
“Never to suffer would have been never to have been blessed.”
(You can also find this quote in: The Complete Tales & Poems of Edgar Allan Poe by Edgar Allan Poe, Race Point Publishing, 2014, Tales, Mesmeric Revelation; p.49)
“All things are either good or bad by comparison.”
(You can also find this quote in: Edgar Allan Poe Annotated and Illustrated Entire Stories and Poems by Edgar Allan Poe, edited by Andrew Barger, Bottletree Books LLC, 2008, Mesmeric Revelation; p.329)
“If you wish to forget anything on the spot, make a note that this thing is to be remembered.”
(The United States Democratic Review Volume 0015 Issue 77, November 1844, Marginalia; p.484)
(You can also find this quote in: The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, Volume 3 by Edgar Allan Poe, Widdleton, 1849, Marginalia; p.483)
“Unthought-like thoughts that are the souls of thought,…”
(You can also find this quote in: Complete Poems by Edgar Allan Poe, edited by Thomas Ollive Mabbott, University of Illinois Press, 2000, To—[B]; p.407)
“How many good books suffer neglect through the inefficiency of their beginnings!”
(The United States Democratic Review Volume 0015 Issue 77, November 1844, Marginalia; p.490)
(You can also find this quote here)
“I have great faith in fools — self-confidence my friends will call it.”
(You can also find this quote in: The Works of the Late Edgar Allan Poe: The literati by Edgar Allan Poe, Redfield, 1857, Marginalia, LXXXVIII; p. 525)
“That man is not truly brave who is afraid either to seem or to be, when it suits him, a coward.”
(You can also find this quote in: The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, Volume 3 by Edgar Allan Poe, Widdleton, 1849, Marginalia, CXXXIII; p.542)
“Invisible things are the only realities.”
(You can also find this quote in: Humorous Tales by Edgar Allan Poe, ch.7, A Tale Neither In nor Out of “Blackwood” Loss Of Breath)
“I intend to put up with nothing that I can put down.”
(You can also find this quote in: The Complete Letters of Edgar Poe by Edgar Allan Poe – Delphi Classics (Illustrated) by Edgar Allan Poe, PublishDrive, 2017, Edgar Allan Poe To J. Beauchamp Jones, August 8, 1839)
“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?”
(You can also find this quote in: The Collected Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe by Edgar Allan Poe, Wordsworth Editions, 2004, The Premature Burial; p.252)
“There are chords in the hearts of the most reckless which cannot be touched without emotion.”
(You can also find this quote in: The Gold-Bug and Other Tales by Edgar Allan Poe, Courier Corporation, 2012, The Masque of the Red Death (1842); p.60)
“They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.”
(You can also find this quote in: Poetry and Tales by Edgar Allan Poe, compiled and edited by Patrick Francis Quinn, Library of America, 1984, Eleonora; p.468)
“I would define, in brief, the poetry of words as the rhythmical creation of Beauty.”
(You can also find this quote in: Poems and Essays on Poetry by Edgar Allan Poe, edited by Charles Hubert Sisson, Taylor & Francis, 2003, Essays on Poetry, The Poetic Principle; p.93)
“I am above the weakness of seeking to establish a sequence of cause and effect, between the disaster and the atrocity.”
(You can also find this quote in: Tales of Mystery and Imagination by Edgar Allan Poe, Harry Clarke, Courier Corporation, 2008; p.93)
“To vilify a great man is the readiest way in which a little man can himself attain greatness.”
(You can also find this quote in: Poems and Essays, Including Eureka, Marginalia Etc. Etc, Black, 1875, Marginalia, C. Little Men; p.397)
“Imitators are not necessarily unoriginal, except at the exact points of the imitation.”
(The United States Democratic Review Volume 0018, Issue 94, Apr 1846, Marginlia; p.270)
(You can also find this quote in: The Works of the Late Edgar Allan Poe, Volume 3 by Edgar Allan Poe, Rufus Wilmot Griswold, Redfield, 1857, Marginalia, CXXII; p.539)
“Experience has shown, and a true philosophy will always show, that a vast, perhaps the larger, portion of truth arises from the seemingly irrelevant.”
(You can also find this quote in: The Complete Tales & Poems of Edgar Allan Poe by Edgar Allan Poe, Race Point Publishing, 2014, The Mystery of Marie Roget; p.162)
“Of puns it has been said that those most dislike who are least able to utter them.”
(You can also find this quote in: The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe by Edgar Allan Poe, Cosimo, Inc., 2009, Marginalia, CLXIX; p.307)
(Another source of this quote is: Edgar Allan Poe, The Brevities: Pinakidia, Marginalia, Fifty Suggestions and Other Works, edited with Introduction and Notes by Burton R. Pollin, The Gordian Press, New York 1985, Marginalia, Installment III: Godey’s Lady’s Book, Aug. 1845, Marginal Notes No. I, Marginalia 119; p.222)
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