Edgar Allan Poe
And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting...Collection: Ravens
We gave the Future to the winds, and slumbered tranquilly in the Present, weaving the dull world around us into dreams.Collection: Dream
In efforts to soar above our nature, we invariably fall below it.Collection: Fall
Perversity is the human thirst for self-torture.Collection: Self
Invisible things are the only realities.Collection: Halloween
False hope is nicer than no hope at all.Collection: Catchy
And so, being young and dipt in folly, I fell in love with melancholy.Collection: Love
The world is a great ocean, upon which we encounter more tempestuous storms than calms.Collection: Ocean
Even in the grave, all is not lost.Collection: Slumber
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.Collection: Night
I was never really insane except upon occasions when my heart was touched.Collection: Heart
Every poem should remind the reader that they are going to die.Collection: Should
The eye, like a shattered mirror, multiplies the images of sorrowCollection: Eye
Reality is the #1 cause of insanity among those who are in contact with itCollection: Reality
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.Collection: Depression
I have great faith in fools,— self-confidence my friends will call it.Collection: Life
The goodness of your true pun is in the direct ratio of its intolerability.Collection: Ratios
Sometimes I’m terrified of my heart; of its constant hunger for whatever it is it wants. The way it stops and starts.Collection: Heartbreak
Art is to look at not to criticize.Collection: Art
To observe attentively is to remember distinctly.Collection: Memories
All religion, my friend, is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination, and poetry.Collection: Inspirational
Democracy is a very admirable form of government - for dogsCollection: Dog
I wish I could write as mysterious as a cat.Collection: Inspirational
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.Collection: Dream
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.Collection: God
There are certain themes of which the interest is all-absorbing, but which are too entirely horrible for the purposes of legitimate fiction.Collection: Purpose
Men die nightly in their beds, wringing the hands of ghostly confessors ... on account of the hideousness of mysteries which will not suffer themselves to be revealed.Collection: Men
Whether people grow fat by joking, or whether there is something in fat itself which predisposes to a joke, I have never been quite able to determine.Collection: People
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.Collection: Reflection
The most 'popular,' the most 'successful' writers among us (for a brief period, at least) are, 99 times out of a hundred, persons of mere effrontery-in a word, busy-bodies, toadies, quacks.Collection: Successful
As a poet and as a mathematician, he would reason well; as a mere mathematician, he could not have reasoned at all.Collection: Reason
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.Collection: Breathing
The result of law inviolate is perfection–right–negative happiness. The result of law violate is imperfection, wrong, positive pain.Collection: Pain
And because our reason violently deters us from the brink, therefore, do we the more impetuously approach it. 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. To indulge for a moment, in any attempt at thought, is to be inevitably lost; for reflection but urges us to forbear, and therefore it is, I say, that we cannot. If there be no friendly arm to check us, or if we fail in a sudden effort to prostrate ourselves backward from the abyss, we plunge, and are destroyed.Collection: Passion
Fill with mingled cream and amber, I will drain that glass again. Such hilarious visions clamber Through the chamber of my brain — Quaintest thoughts — queerest fancies Come to life and fade away; What care I how time advances? I am drinking ale today.Collection: Food
Either the memory of past bliss is the anguish of to-day; or the agonies which are have their origins in ecstasies which might have been.Collection: Memories
The mere imitation, however accurate, of what is in Nature, entitles no man to the sacred name of ArtistCollection: Artist
Coincidences, in general, are great stumbling blocks in the way of that class of thinkers who have been educated to know nothing of the theory of probabilities- that theory to which the most glorious objects of human research are indebted for the most glorious of illustration.Collection: Block
...for her whom in life thou dids't abhor, in death thou shalt adoreCollection: Adore
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.Collection: Revenge
But evil things, in robes of sorrow, Assailed the monarch's high estate; (Ah, let us mourn, for never morrow Shall dawn upon him desolate!) And round about his home the glory That blushed and bloomed, Is but a dim-remembered story Of the old time entombed.Collection: Home
In beauty of face no maiden ever equaled her. It was the radiance of an opium-dream - an airy and spirit-lifting vision more wildly divine than the fantasies which hovered about the slumbering souls of the daughters of Delos.Collection: Daughter
How much more intense is the excitement wrought in the feelings of a crowd by the contemplation of human agony, than that brought about by the most appalling spectacles of inanimate matter.Collection: Agony
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 marvellous a character that, as mere coincidences, the intellect has been unable to receive them.Collection: Character
And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain Thrilled me — filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before; So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating, Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door — Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door; — This it is, and nothing more.Collection: Heart
..bear in mind that, in general, it is the object of our newspapers rather to create a sensation-to make a point-than to further the cause of truth." Dupin in "The Mystery of Marie RogetCollection: Mind
Even for those to whom life and death are equal jests. There are some things that are still held in respect.Collection: Life And Death
It is the curse of a certain order of mind, that it can never rest satisfied with the consciousness of its ability to do a thing.Still less is it content with doing it. It must both know and show how it was done.Collection: Order
Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!” Quoth the raven, “Nevermore.Collection: Heart